Half Lifey survival game Abiotic Factor is out now in early access

Chuck the original Half-Life and Minecraft into a reactor core with Lethal Company and the resulting, bleating, pustulant abomination might look a bit like Abiotic Factor, a one-to-six player first-person survival game from Deep Field Games and Playstack, in which a bunch of stranded boffins must find their way out of a huge underground lab that has experienced a paranormal containment breach, as is the tendency of huge underground labs.

On the one hand, you've got to deal with interdimensional horrors of various flavours, such as multiple-storey cryptids and squishy skinless wolves; on the other, invading squads of Combiney soldiers. Fortunately, you've got a big fat Ivy League brain stuffed with knowledge of killer gadgets, base construction, subterranean farming and battlefield medicine. My increasing phobia for survival games notwithstanding, I think this looks and sounds like a hoot - and it's out now in early access. Here's the launch trailer.

As detailed in a Steam blog, the Abiotic Factor early access release includes three biomes or sectors - the offices, the labs and the manufacturing sector, plus "6+ portal worlds". I find the last line irritating inasmuch as there could be as few as seven portal worlds or an infinite quantity, but I guess that note of cosmic irresolution is appropriate to the premise of borked dimensions. You can travel around the facility by means of a tram system, which is definitely appropriate to a game that riffs on Half-Life - I'm sure players will waste no time recreating the Valve shooter's legendary intro sequence.

There's a Crush Depth update coming in the summer which will introduce the security and hydroplant sectors, a "full laser system", jetpacks, teleporters and the unromantic but doubtless invaluable autosalvager. In autumn, we can expect a Dark Energy update which adds the reactor sector, hardlight technology for gossamer-thin bridges, "the gatekeepers" and various [redacted] things or places.

The developers plan to release the 1.0 version this winter, with a "chilling final chapter". They caution that everything is subject to change, and that "there will be some small and medium-sized updates in between these major roadmap updates".

Not really up for another survival sim, but newly afflicted with Half Life nostalgia? You might prefer to read Jeremy's interview with former Valve writer Marc Laidlaw about designing and writing Black Mesa.