Angels Fall First
Angels Fall First is a first person combined-arms sci-fi wargame.
AFF focuses on team-oriented tactical gameplay and objective-based scenarios with a high degree of replayability, featuring:
- Wide selection of weapons and tools, ground vehicles and spacecraft to fight with.
- Diverse combat opportunities – assume point to clear a building, hunt with a frigate wolfpack as a lineship captain, issue orders from the bridge of your battleship.
- Fully operational and pilotable capital ships with playable interiors.
- Unique combination of spaceship and infantry combat – board spacestations, shipyards and vessels to capture or destroy them from the inside.
- Dogfighting using space interceptors and bombers, launched from capital ships and stations.
- Gameplay mechanics designed as a mix of modern elements (customization, loadouts, persistence) and inspirations from classic shooters (frantic, fast-paced firefights).
- Commander mode for issuing orders to your squadmates and teammates.
- Full AI support – all scenarios can be played both offline and online identically, supporting up to 64 players or bots filling in for the players if required.
- Rich science fiction universe setting.
Another space game?
Well, we’ve been doing this a long time – AFF has been a rich universe of fiction and art since 2005. We made a Homeworld mod, and kept building from there. Work started on an Unreal Tournament 2004 mod, but was then ported over to UT3 in 2007, culminating in a 3rd place grand prize in 2009’s MakeSomethingUnreal contest.
Angels Fall First as a standalone game is, for us, a mission to enable the player to do as much as possible in a vast environment – whilst still retaining the focussed, fun experience of match based FPS games.
Way back in the back-whens, we loved Tie Fighter. A little later on, we loved Battlefield. We waited patiently for the game which would inevitably unite the vast scale and spacefights with the close and personal firefights and thunderous vehicle battles…
But it never really appeared. Many games came close, but there was always some part missing. You couldn’t get out of your spaceship, you couldn’t get into your spaceship, you had big spaceships but you couldn’t run around in them, you could run around in your big spaceship but you couldn’t fly it and so on and so forth and gahd damMIT! Where was our spacefight groundfight game?
So, we set ourselves to work. AFF exists because it MUST exist. Only in AFF can you spawn in your crew quarters, run to the bay watching the space fight out of the windows, launch a dropship, fight through the defenders to the enemy flagship, breach the hull, run and gun your way to the bridge and SHOOT THE ENEMY CAPTAIN IN THE BACK OF THE NECK.
Calm Down!
Ok. But it’s this slightly twitchy passion which has driven us to create such a monster. We grew old making this, and we got grumpy watching everyone else release their cool games or whatever. We’re from a time when games were about blowing stuff up for points and glory and now FINALLY we want to go out there and share this crazy passion with all of you!
Game Discussion
Steam User 27
I haven't played this game since 2016, but I just saw it in my library.
As of 2016, it was an awesome space fighting game. Like if classic star wars battlefront got an awesome sequel. You want to board a capital space ship, kill your way through with your buddies, and sacrifice yourself to blow up the reactor core? You can do that! You want to fight off enemy fighters and drop ships by nimbly weaving around and through a complex megastructure? You go Anakin Skywalker!
What about mechanical depth? It's moderately deep across the board. A bit more than Battlefield but less than something like Arma or Squad. Some of the game modes are mechanically more complex, but not hard to grasp. Ignore all the reviews with less than about 8 hours. They didn't play long enough to learn any of the mechanics.
I've always thought that the biggest problem with this game is marketing. It seems like it was made by guys who are good at and love making games, but don't have a knack for marketing. I'm going to try to get back into this game now that I have friends who would like it. After almost 10 years of development, I'm sure it's even better.
To the dev reading these reviews. It's blind leading the blind, but maybe you would benefit from giving out copies to mid to low tier twitch streamers? Maybe have a big event that you invite all of them and do whatever it is you do to mobilize your community to help showcase the game.
You could also try to get on one of the weird promotional steam sales or and offer a free weekend? You have a gem, but no one knows you do.
Steam User 19
I am looking forward to the release of 1.0 , when people will (re) discover this fantastic game. I have been playing more regularly since the latest major update and let me tell you - This is a briliant achievement on the Unreal Engine 3, and gets more fun the more time you put into it (the huge array odf weapons, vehicles and options can be disorienting at first).
While multiplayer servers are mostly dormant as of yet, the NPCs are surprisingly adept and provide lots of challenge (both enemy and your team is capable) the territories game type is great but the incursion types (objective based assaults written around a story setting) are the best.
Angels Fall First has lots of personality and I dare to say even though its graphical engine has one or two generations wide gap between its contemporary peers, art direction is still one of the best I have seen in this kind of sci fi combined arms game.
Sure not perfect as it is early acces when I write it, but there are lots to praise here.
The maps are unique locations with exciting design and nice fine details, map flow is great, the CQC land warfare works well, your kit is highly modular and upgradable. Weapons and vehicles are also well thought out. Music is great and honestly the game surprises me with its features time and time again, especially in the incursion game type. Boarding an enemy station or spaceship while the space battle is raging outside never gets old!
Hats of for the indie devs, I really hope people will rediscover Angels Fall First and its rich lore, locations, its exciting spin on combined arms warfare.
Steam User 20
Angels Fall First is what i'd describe as the Battlefront 3 we never got.
It's a sci-fi, large scale combined arms shooter, with a mix of infantry combat, ground and air vehicle combat and space dogfighting and ship boarding.
As a multiplayer shooter, it's servers are kiiiiiinda dead, but I think there's pick-up games here and there.
However, it has very solid and fun singleplayer computer bot games, akin to Battlefront 2.
Technically still in Early Access, but it's pretty much a fully fledged title.
At first, it can be kinda confusing to get into, with the many somewhat poorly designed menus and the complex loadout system (Albeit, it's not that bad once you figure it out)
Unfortunately, on the bad side of the coin, this game looks and feels quite old, and it basically is. It's essentially a 2009 game, that's been built upon for several years and was originally a mod for Unreal Tournament 3. As such, it also still is on the long out of date Unreal Engine 3.
As such, this game is filled with tech debt from 10+ years ago and might as well a lost Mechanicus artifact that has been rediscovered by the Mechanicus, who no longer have any clue how the hell it works. It performs pretty badly for it's visuals due to some questionable optimization choices, ESPECIALLY in space battles.
Space battles I tend to get sub 40 frames in on a BEEFY rig made to run modern games at high FPS 1440p.
That is to say, as a relic of a bygone era, there is not much like it out there any more and as such, I generally recommend it.
Steam User 11
Banger. An absolute banger, with no playerbase. Ai battles are fun though.
Steam User 23
The devs say that they got old making this game.
I got old watching them do it.
I stumbled across this game in the mid oughts when they were doing their thing behind a cool webpage, no steam. I kept my eye on it without buying it because I'm a sp strategy gamer with a thing for scifi, so was my bag adjacent. Watched them for what has turned into 20 odd years as they stuck with it. I just bought the game, not because I'll enjoy it (it's still not my thing) but because these devs deserve it. This kind of dedication is hard to find in the world, let alone in game development, and I wanted to, finally, give them my monetary appreciation for their long journey. It's not much, but it seemed the best way to let them know that they have impressed at least one old school gamer.
Steam User 11
Angels Fall First is an underrated gem for people looking for something different and nostalgic. It’s not perfect, but if you’re willing to overlook some rough edges, you’ll find a game that offers a lot of fun and variety. The developers clearly put a lot of love into the game, and it shows. Definitely worth checking out.
Steam User 12
Beautiful love child between planetside, titanfall, and OG Star Wars battlefront. Only thing missing is the players.
Single player is still a lot of fun. Public servers run well, each map has a different set of objectives with an awesome mashup between Infantry/Vehicle/Space Ship combat.