Video Game / Abiotic Factor

Abiotic Factor is a Survival Horror Survival Sandbox game developed by Deep Field Games that was released in Early Access in 2024.

Located in the GATE Cascade Research Facility, your Player Character, a scientist that was just transferred to the facility, arrives to find out that it has been inundated with alien monsters and that their way out has been cut completely. Using their scientific smarts, you will have to not only find your way out of the facility, but also survive using the resources found in the massive underground laboratory.

Proudly inspired by Half-Life, the concept could be described as 'Half Life, but you're NOT Gordon Freeman'. It will take a long time for you to find your way out of the facility - so you must eat, drink, rest, and find safe shelters in a hostile environment, as well as scavenging any materials you can find to make new inventions.

Examples

• Action Survivor: Your character is first and foremost a civilian scientist, and even picking the Security class at the start will have them still be fairly mediocre in combat at first - until they get better equipment and levels in various combat skills, at which point handling enemies will become much easier.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The various alien lifeforms from Anteverse II, which form the majority of the enemies in the facility, are all actually part of the same species despite being massively different from one another, with Dr. Manse describing them as being able to change what form they take once they reach adulthood through some unknown mean.
• Expy:
  • The game's unabashedly inspired by Half-Life, so it's not surprising that the enemies you find in the facility can be a bit familiar:
    • The Carbuncle is one to the Barnacles, as stationary enemies that latch onto you with their tongues. However, unlike the Barnacles, Carbuncles don't actually pose a direct threat due to simply being that weak and can just be stomped to death - they also prefer to be on the ground and walls rather than the ceiling.
    • The Pest is one to the Headcrab, as a small enemy that attacks by leaping towards you at high speed - unlike Headcrabs, Pests do not cause zombification, instead simply hurting you with the spikes on their body.
    • The Exors are near identical to Vortigaunts, being humanoid aliens capable of generating lightning attacks from their hands and make liberal use of teleportation.
    • The Order as a whole are a reference to the HECU, being human military enemies that show up to 'cleanse' the Facility. Bonus poins for them also showing up only later in the game, after you've fought through exclusively alien creatures.
  • The Composers are not inspired by any particular Half Life enemy, but they ARE very likely inspired by Sirenhead, as they are giant, lanky humanoid creatures that show up in a fog-shrouded areas and make hellish noises.
• In-Universe Game Clock: An unusual variant of the trope: since almost the entire game is set in an underground facility, a day and night cycle wouldn't normally matter - instead here, when night-time arrives, the Facility enters a 'power conservation' mode, shutting off all the lights and power sockets as well as freeing dangerous Security Bots all over the place.
• Mighty Glacier: Security Bots are big, tanky, resist blunt damage and have hefty attacks that can stun players, but they're also slow enough that you can easily kite them around, either running away from them or leading them into traps they won't even attempt to avoid.
• Nobody Poops: Utterly averted: 'continence' is one of the survival bars alongside hunger, thirst and fatigue, turning the various toilets around the facility into a precious commodity for continued exploration.
• Non-Indicative Name: The Cooking Pot's recipes are called 'Soups', making you assume that you can only get food from them - but you also obtain items that are definetly not edible from them, like solder, that are still counted as 'soups'.
• Rewarding Vandalism: Be it breaking apart boxes for the contents or the wooden planks they're made of or smashing aparts computers to scavenge the components, vandalizing the facility is well-rewarded.
• Science Hero: The player character being a scientist is not just for flavour, a major mechanic is creating new inventions to craft and getting inspirations for said inventions by picking up new materials and items.
• Stealth-Based Mission: The first Portal World and a mandatory part to continue the story is Flathill, a shrouded town filled with giant Humanoid Abominations called Composers. The game outright tells you that your weaponry will NOT work on them and tells you to avoid them at all costs, requiring learning their patrol routes and carefully sneaking past them.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The game's plot, graphic style, and concept are heavily inspired by the first Half-Life, right down to the name of the facility referencing that game's "Resonance Cascade"