Abiotic Factor's biggest update yet adds new sectors to explore, plus jetpacks, jeeps and laser katanas
Everyone loved Half-Life yet no one in 1998 was brave enough to say: “Okay, but what if this was an early access crafting survival game voiced by a bunch of New Zealanders?” Those 90s cowards. Abiotic Factor is the courageous game that has been correcting this historic oversight. It’s fun, and the fun just got funnerer. The “Crush Depth” update, released yesterday, adds a heap of new areas to the game’s messed-up scientific facility, including a dangerous Security Sector and a vast reservoir zone called the Hydroplant. On top of that there are new weapons, tools, workbenches, drivable vehicles, fishing rods, and quite a bit more. It’s all shown off in the trailer below.
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That was very dramatic for a crafting sim with a pooing minigame. But still, it nicely shows off the new places you can explore, plus a skipload of smaller features. The jetpack will let you reach awkward heights. A fishing rod lets you fish not only in water but also, it seems, in the toxic sludge that appears in some parts of the facility. The laser katana will cut off zombie heads at a considerable distance (see the other video linked below). And the SUV will let you drive around underground car parks and presumably run over your friends “by accident”. Good. Good. These are all very useful objects, scientifically speaking.
The way temperature works in the game has also been overhauled so that the effects of hot and cold environments on your delicate boffin’s bod are now clearer (a frosty effect at the edge of the screen and suchlike). Alongside that there are new ways to deal with the most extreme temperatures, such as slurping coffee to warm up or eating ice cream to cool off. And on a side note, there’s a new deployable item called the Moisture Teleporter, which basically creates water from thin air. Very handy, considering that up until now I’ve been watering all my tomato plants by walking around the offices looking for untapped water coolers.
There are a lot of other tweaks. The game previously added some hideous “weather” types in another recent update – sinister fog, sickening spores, and radiation leaks. But the fog turned out to be “too foggy” and has now been “reduced in intensity, just a bit”. The developers also spent some time optimising performance in some of the wonkier areas. “We tore apart some of the Sectors and put them back together in a way that allows smaller chunks of the areas to load,” say Deep Field Games in the update post. “We can’t promise we fixed all of the optimization issues some scientists have experienced, but we can guarantee one thing: we gave it a pretty good shot!”
So yeah, those are the highlights. The game’s community manager has edited together a helpful and enthusiastic video covering the most significant changes and additions. For people who hate to hear a human voice that is not the screaming one inside their own head, there’s also the full patch notes on Steam.
For me the update has perfect timing. I’ve been (slowly) playing the retro-styled science ’em up with some buds, and we have a playdate set for this week. Of all the best survival games I’ve tried in recent years, Abiotic Factor has the most heart. It knows how ridiculous it is to craft usable weaponry from duct tape and metal scraps, fully leaning into the absurdism of its own genre. Maybe my friends and I will get further than the opening sectors this time. I’m sick of that annoying security mech in the lobby. Just who does it think it is? Bloody robots.