- Exceptional art and immersive atmosphere
- Engaging scavenging and stealth gameplay
- Unique extraction shooter mechanics
- Repetitive and grindy gameplay loop
- Numerous bugs and unpolished state
- Poor optimization and performance issues
Emotions
Players experience significant frustration due to persistent technical issues, including crashes, performance lag, and game-breaking bugs, even on high-end hardware. The gameplay mechanics are often described as clunky, poorly explained, or unfair, such as janky enemy behavior, unclear progression systems, and punishing progression loops that hinder enjoyment.
The game fails to meet expectations due to its unpolished state, poor execution of mechanics, and lack of meaningful progression. Players feel let down by the disparity between the game's promising concept and its current technical issues, repetitive grind, and harsh punishment systems, which overshadow its potential.
Despite the game's flaws, players express hope in its future due to the developers' active engagement, frequent updates, and the game's underlying potential. Many believe that with continued improvements, bug fixes, and refinements, the game could evolve into a standout experience that aligns with its ambitious vision.
Players are excited by the game's unique atmosphere, immersive world design, and engaging mechanics like exploration, survival, and dynamic combat. The frequent updates, evolving gameplay loop, and moments of intense or unpredictable gameplay contribute to a sense of thrill and anticipation for future content.
Players appreciate the game's art direction, immersive atmosphere, and the developers' dedication to ongoing improvements and community feedback. The unique setting, world-building, and creative vision are frequently highlighted as standout aspects that make the game memorable despite its flaws.
Verdict
Mostly negative
Summary
Positive 47% · Negative 53%. Score: 53 / 100
Positives:
- The game's art style, world-building, and immersive atmosphere are consistently praised for their uniqueness, beauty, and attention to detail. Players highlight the dystopian aesthetic, environmental design, and atmospheric immersion as standout features.
- The development team is frequently commended for actively listening to community feedback, releasing frequent updates, and demonstrating a strong commitment to improving the game. Players appreciate the transparency and iterative improvements.
- The core gameplay loop revolves around scavenging, stealth, and strategic survival, which players find rewarding and immersive. The mechanics encourage cautious playstyles, resource management, and adaptability to dynamic enemy encounters.
- Enemies are praised for their unique designs, factions, and dynamic behaviors. The variety and randomization of encounters add challenge and replayability, with players appreciating the immersive and often terrifying enemy interactions.
- Despite being in Early Access, the game's core mechanics, such as combat, progression, and resource management, are well-received. Players find the gameplay thrilling and engaging, especially when the systems work as intended.
Negatives:
- Players consistently report that the gameplay loop feels tedious, repetitive, and overly time-consuming, particularly due to repetitive tunnel runs, water grinding, and lack of meaningful progression. This creates a lack of motivation to continue playing.
- Enemies are frequently described as overly difficult, with unrealistic accuracy, poor pathfinding, and unfair spawn mechanics (e.g., spawning directly on players). This leads to frustration and a sense of unfair punishment.
- The game is plagued by bugs, glitches, and technical issues, including game-breaking bugs, poor animations, and unoptimized performance. Many players feel the game is not ready for release despite its Early Access status.
- Tunnels are widely criticized for being dark, repetitive, and poorly designed, often forcing players to navigate confusing and time-consuming paths. Many players feel tunnels dominate gameplay and ruin immersion.
- The game suffers from severe optimization issues, including low FPS, crashes, and lag, even on high-end hardware. This significantly detracts from the gameplay experience and accessibility.
Gameplay:
- Tunnels serve as a high-risk, high-reward navigation system, offering loot and fast travel but introducing platforming challenges, pitch-black environments, and randomized layouts. Players criticize mandatory tunnel traversal as tedious or unbalanced.
- Scavenging and loot management are central to gameplay, with limited high-value loot encouraging stealth and strategic extraction. Procedural generation adds replayability but risks imbalance (e.g., tunnel loot abundance).
- Players report that the progression system resets abilities, upgrades, or skill trees upon reaching prestige levels, requiring re-grinding for full character development. This mechanic is polarizing, as it adds long-term replayability but frustrates short-term progress.
- Water functions as a dual-purpose resource: required for fast travel (via drones) and progression (e.g., map access). Grinding for water is a common complaint, especially when tied to tunnel repetition.
- Prestige levels grant minor but meaningful passive bonuses (e.g., increased walk speed, health, or mobility), incentivizing players to engage with the system despite reset penalties.
Performance:
- Players report significant FPS drops, stuttering, and poor optimization even on high-end hardware (e.g., RTX 4070 Ti, 5070 Ti). Issues include DLSS/FSR-related visual glitches, texture loading delays, and inconsistent frame rates (e.g., 5-60 FPS).
- Major visual glitches include invisible environments/characters, texture pop-ins, and rendering errors. Collision issues (e.g., clipping, invisible walls) and physics bugs (e.g., ragdolls, flying tanks) disrupt gameplay.
- Server instability, multiplayer lag, and co-op performance issues are reported, including FPS drops in crowded scenes and inconsistent CPU/RAM usage (e.g., 27%–72% CPU variance).
- Smaller issues include camera glitches, janky movement, and occasional hit-detection bugs. While not game-breaking, these affect gameplay comfort and immersion.
- Performance varies drastically by hardware, with low-end PCs struggling (sub-30 FPS) and high-end systems (e.g., RTX 3080 Ti) achieving stability. Optimization improvements over time have helped but not resolved core issues.
Recommendations:
- Players consistently highlight the game's unique atmosphere, dystopian setting, and immersive world-building as standout features. These elements are often cited as reasons to overlook technical flaws.
- The game is frequently recommended for players who enjoy challenging, atmospheric, or PvE-focused experiences, particularly fans of extraction shooters, dungeon exploration, or grimdark settings.
- Despite current flaws, many players believe the game has significant potential to become one of the best in its genre with future updates, optimization, and bug fixes.
- Many players feel the game is unfinished, citing clunky mechanics, poor optimization, and lack of polish. The core gameplay is described as punishing and unrefined, making it unsuitable for those expecting a complete experience.
- Criticisms include poor UI design, unclear tutorials, and unbalanced mechanics (e.g., recovery drones, movement, and extraction systems). These issues hinder accessibility and enjoyment.
Miscellaneous:
- Criticism and discussion around in-game purchases, including paid character skins and DLC skin packs, suggest player sensitivity to monetization strategies. Some reviews highlight this as a potential distraction from core gameplay.
- Players frequently mention the game's Early Access status, indicating mixed feelings about its current state and expectations for future development. This reflects both optimism and caution about ongoing improvements.
- The game’s nostalgic 'spirit' and artistic vision are praised for evoking older titles, resonating with players seeking classic gameplay experiences. This reflects the team’s passion and creative direction.
- Monthly update videos and developer transparency are highlighted as positive engagement strategies. Players appreciate the team’s connection to the community and iterative improvements.
- Players express frustration with the perceived overemphasis on visuals at the expense of deeper gameplay mechanics. This critique aligns with broader industry trends but resonates strongly in this title.
