It was only a matter of time before a developer decided to cash-in on the whole “Storm Area 51” meme that’s currently doing the rounds. Sure enough, Steam is now playing host to a new video game that lets players live out the Area 51 fantasy, at least in theory.
Storm Area 51: September 20th 2019 is an Early Access Steam game from developer and publisher ProjectorGames, that pays tribute to the recently revealed (and utterly ridiculous) joke-plan to storm Area 51 and “see them aliens.”
If the words “early” “access” “Steam” and “Area 51” put together aren’t enough to stop you from playing this, there’s really not much I can do to help you. This is a classic case of someone taking a joke too far and completely killing it, in my humble opinion.
KEEMSTAR play testing our 1st build! “Storm Area 51” pic.twitter.com/rdcz34KSS1
— Storm Area 51 (@Area51Game) July 17, 2019
Here’s the official description on Steam:
Survive the epic raid on Area 51 and rescue the aliens from the military compound using classic stealth mechanics and cover. It’s 3am, September 20th, 2019…. join the millions planning to storm Area 51 in this alien rescue action simulator. Brought to you by Keemstar, can you survive the break in, find the helpless alien captives and get them safely to their UFO to pilot them out of Area 51 and show the world what the government has been hiding all these years?
You can explore various routes into Area 51 while avoiding guards using “classic stealth mechanics”, before guiding rescued aliens back to their ships without getting caught and killed. You can even use other runners (who do in fact do the Naruto run) as cover while you storm the base. Lovely.
Shockingly, the Early Access (read; rushed out) title has been getting absolutely slayed by those who have played it, with many admonishing Keemstar for promoting such a bucket of warm milky crap.
At the time of writing (and I assume long after this article has been forgotten) the game has a mostly negative rating on Steam, with users blasting it as “disgusting”, “straight trash”, “horrible”, “unfinished to the point where I wouldn’t even consider it a game yet” and nowhere near worth the price of admission (£6.83, if you were wondering).
Here’s one review from a user called yung noodle arm:
This game is trash, straight trash. I’m all for being in on a joke, but this game is so bad it kills the joke. Save your money, it’s bad. Not ironically bad, just bad. Probably the worst thing ive played and believe me i have played a lot.
I don’t believe I’ve ever said this before or will get to say it again, but kids; listen to yung noodle arm.
If you really want to storm Area 51 without actually getting gunned down for attempting to break into a real military base IRL then fine, go play this game. My honest advice is that it’s time we all move on from this meme now, because it stopped being funny round about the time this game surfaced.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.