Abiotic Factor is a Survival Game. You play as scientists that were transferred to a GATE Cascade Facility in the Western Australian Outback in 1993. Here you must survive with food, water, and monsters! This interesting Survival Game became a new obsession overnight.

Abiotic Factor

As said before, Abiotic Factor is a Survival Game, it was released in early access but is now out in 1.0 as of July 22nd. You will be tasked to survive by eating, drinking, and even napping. It’s not a normal survival game; when you build your character, you will have the ability to choose your positive trait.

Like Night Owl: where you become 50% more fatigued. Self Defense: Deal +3 damage with all melee weapons. But you have to balance out some points. If you want multiple Positive Traits, you will have to pick some Negative Traits, as the traits have their points; the Positive Traits take away points, with the lowest being 2 and the highest being 10.

Negative traits will return points from 2 to 8. These Negative Traits will obviously have their restrictions. Asthmatic: you will lose Stamina. Narcoleptic: you will grow fatigued 75% faster, or Fear of Violence: is where your skills in Accuracy, Reloading, Blunt Melee, Sharp Melee, and Throwing, will stop at level 5 and never progress. While the Negative Traits can be a hindrance, with proper care, they don’t have to be game defining.

Once you pick your traits, you will be thrown into Abiotic Factor, and you’ll learn how to build and package items. Getting into the game, you will notice the crafting being weird and a bit unique. As you learn new things, you will have to go in and craft a menu. You will have to put different items together, and then… let your brain do the work.

Enemies

Having completed that, you strike at the core of the experience: Abiotic Factor is a survival game. In the GATE program, you are tasked as a scientist, but your task never comes to fruition comes as there is an invasion from men with guns hunting down the scientists to stop them from opening the gates. These gates lead to alternate worlds with aliens/monsters that vary in design and attack mode.

From a Pest monster that jumps at you with spines, to a large skeleton-like monster, known as the Composer, that towers over you and hunts you down. The worlds are vastly different as well, going between what seems like another dimension to possibly the other side of the world. 

Abiotic Factor is a horror game, but I love it. Music doesn’t play, it’s just a silent mess of radiation, footsteps, or one coworker talking endlessly. There is an… entity known as the coworker that walks around on all fours and just creeps out of the darkness to be fed. And besides that, the monsters are not afraid to jump scare you.

One moment, the environment changes to foggy, and with that comes zero visibility and something that I am sure was a floating skeleton. It jumped scared me to the point I ran away, and then it was gone. Later, I learned it was known as a Symphonist, a tiny version of the Composer that appears during the Fog Event.

Also, those men I mentioned earlier Known as terrorists to the scientists, they come through the portals and start killing scientists. They are in full body armor and have guns. So yes, gotta survive against them too.

Nighttime and Radiation

Besides fighting entities, you will be surviving the night, as in a night with no power. The facility will shut down and release security robots. Robots are tough to fight, but they will get easier over time, especially since you have to figure out ways to take them out early, as you need their parts.

With the facility losing power, it’s hard to find anything working unless you have a battery. Besides that, you will fight through radiation and such, but from there, Abiotic Factor is a regular survival game. As long as you maintain your food, water, and sleep, you can survive. Oh, and don’t forget to use the restroom when needed.

The only thing I am not used to is not building the base from the ground up. But I am getting used to it slowly. Regardless, it is a well put-together game. Some might have an issue with the graphics, but as someone who enjoys pixel art or even a poly art style like Schedule I, this isn’t much of a problem. Regardless, it’s the most fun I’ve had in a survival game in a while, even if it makes me check my heart to make sure it’s still beating at times.

You can find Abiotic Factor on Steam, or your console’s store!