Anyone else playing? It’s an exploration base builder / crafting game with a light SCP setting, at least in the early going. Hopefully the weirdness ramps up. Full release July 2025 after a year of early access. The big negative is that people say it looks ugly, so if you can’t get into the aesthetic you’re in good company. I kind of like it. Anything 3D is fine by me, usually.
I picked this up during the Spring sale on Steam and got really into it a week or so ago. I’ve spent many dozens of hours playing with base designs, and in terms of story I just finally unlocked Manufacturing West.
The first time returning from Manufacturing West on the tram convinced me that on top of the security station outside the cafeteria is the intended place to build your base. Or at least a base; I don’t know yet if one single base location can suffice for the whole game. Right next to the tram seems promising, at least.
It’s not currently on sale so now is not the ideal time to pick up, unfortunately.
I saw mention of this game in the general video games thread and have become somewhat obsessive reading reviews of it, as it sounds just up my alley. But I’m trying very hard to wait for a sale. I will not last long if one is not forthcoming.
Yeah, I’d been similarly closely eyeing it for a couple months until the spring sale. But looking at my receipt, it still cost me $27.07 before tax. I picked it up in a bundle with Planet Crafter to get that price even though I already owned Planet Crafter. It’s on a similarly meager sale now for $29.73 at gamebillet in case you wanna say screw it. Or maybe the bundle is better if you also already own Planet Crafter.
Okay, I’ve tested makeshift batteries and have some numbers.
First, night lasts 4:30. One battery lasts 4:10, a second chained battery lasts 1/2 that (2:05), a third battery lasts a 1/3 of the original (1:23), fourth lasts 1/4 (1:02), etc… One battery on each device leaves you 20 seconds short each night.
To avoid chains, have one battery connected to a plug strip, and that plug strip connected to three batteries powering three devices. That initial battery will last longer than 20 seconds so you’ll have uninterrupted power for all three of those devices. Add as many groups like this as you please, power outlets supply infinite power.
Technically a single battery can provide the extra 20 seconds for up to 5 devices (each with their own battery), but it’s cleaner to just do one extra battery per power strip and call it good enough.
For military purposes I tend to want multiple devices on a single line that I can feed through a switch, turning them all on and off at the same time. How many batteries you need in a single chain to power x number of devices was difficult to google, and I’m finding most of the numbers on wiki wrong. Although it’s possible my testing is flawed, here are the numbers I get in-game with default settings:
Devices
1:5
Chained
Tax
1
2
2
0
2
3
4
1
3
4
5
1
4
5
7
2
5
6
9
3
6
8
11
3
7
9
14
5
1:5 being the optimal setup of one battery feeds 5 batteries powering 5 devices. Chaining them isn’t too bad up to three devices, only requiring a single extra makeshift battery.
The irony is all of this will become moot in short order when I unlock the next level of battery, which I feel like I’m about to do.
I played 100+ hours of this last year solo and, despite the low res voxel graphics, the gameplay is quite deep and involved. If the game had been made with a conventional graphic style, I imagine it would have made a bigger splash. I appreciate gameplay over graphics so I quite enjoyed my time with it, but I did peter out before the end. Maybe I would have stuck with it with a group.
I’m always surprised when people get caught up on the graphics of it, I like old 3D graphics and have a soft spot for PSX/N64 looking games. Guess I was in the minority.
And seeing how many people are interested in it on this board, would it be a bad idea to start a server for all board members to join in on? The game is normally 6 player, but with dedicated servers you can go up to 24 I believe.
Abiotic Factor is included in the Playstation Plus Extra/Premium tier, in the off chance you have that.
I think I have to start over, having just unlocked Manufacturing West. That’s still very early, right? (lol at my 70 hours played already.)
My character choices were abysmal; I need the extra two hotbar buttons so badly. Stinks that character creation choices are so lopsided. I don’t care at all that my character with crafting bonuses crafts things a quarter second faster or whatever the bonus is.
I finished it on the PC, I do wonder if I miss much or have a much harder time because I play it single player having nobody to co-op with. Do they put in more enemies with co-op?
I started seeing what people were talking about with the bad graphics when I was trying to place things by lining them up to the lines in the floor. My gut reaction when I first heard of the complaints about the graphics was that it was basically like Raft.
Yesterday I happened to catch a few minutes of one of my raft videos and, wow. Raft graphics are shockingly better than Abiotic Factor. Not shocking in the sense that it’s way better, but shocking in the sense that Raft was written by a couple dudes in college for a class. If you’re trying to carefully place something based on the lines in the floor, Raft has significantly better detail.
I haven’t yet decided how I feel about how loot drops work in this game. Particularly special items, like those orange launchy things (gaseous nests). Every time you start a new instance, everything you haven’t found yet gets re-rolled and could show up for you this time.
On the one hand, it’s fantastic in that you don’t have to worry about trying to find something somewhere else because it didn’t spawn for you in the convenient spot. Just check the same spot every time you start a session and you’ll find it in short order.
On the other hand, it’s annoying that you can’t fully clear out an area in a single pass. The loot logic also applies to random trash loot, so the second time you go to an area, any trash loot that didn’t spawn the first time might be there now. Meaning you have to go back several times if you want to be sure you found everything. Which you wouldn’t do because why bother, but it is disconcerting to go back to an area you fully cleaned out and see loot all over the counters.
Comparing it back to Raft, it would be like you anchor at a large island, run around and gather all the resources, then log out of the game and log right back in. Now the island is half restocked with more resources in different spots. It’s just a weird mechanic I still haven’t gotten my head around.