Aliens: Dark Descent is a rock hard RTS in which four Colonial Marines take on hordes of xenomorphs in a world on the brink of destruction. One wrong move many minutes prior can result in your whole squad getting wiped out in the blink of an eye.Oh, and your soldiers can permanently die, With that kind of pressure, you’re probably hoping that you can manual save in Dark Descent.
Well, the bad news is that you cannot manual save in Aliens: Dark Descent, as you’re at the mercy of the game’s autosave, which usually triggers every time you make progress on an objective.
The closest thing that Aliens: Dark Descent has to a manual save is when you rest at a shelter, which will trigger an autosave. However, you will need Tools to weld each door in a room, so it’s not exactly a dependable method of saving your progress. Choose a small room with one door to save on Tools.
Luckily, you have quite a few older autosaves to load if things really go awry, but no way of manual saving and then experimenting. If you’re going to do something risky, try and make sure you have a recent autosave first, as there’s nothing more frustrating than having to deal with a whole bunch of xenos all over again when you’re forced to reload.
Not being able to autosave does add to the stakes and immersion of Dark Descent, as it limits save scumming your way to glory. While it might make your experience almost a bit too frustrating, we’d actually recommend just letting some of your squad die instead of reloading saves from a purely role-playing perspective.
Aliens: Dark Descent is a tough game, but it’s not an impossible one. The best piece of advice we can give is to just take your time. The slow down function is there for a reason, as it allows you to really weigh up every angle and enemy placement before you go charging into a new room. While it may make your job harder down the line due to the spread of alien infestation, there’s no shame in retreating to the ARC and getting back to the Otago if things are getting too dicey. Generally speaking, the first squad that arrives at a location should probably not be the ones who finishes everything in one visit.
Aliens: Dark Descent is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X & S.
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