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Personal Selection
In conjunction with our primary Game of the Year Awards 2024, each member of the PC Gamer staff is highlighting a game they enjoyed this year. Throughout the remainder of the month, we will share new personal selections alongside our main accolades.
Prior to experiencing Abiotic Factor, I believed I had fully moved past survival games. It seems I was merely exhausted from repetitively striking the same trees, crafting identical pickaxes, and excavating the same holes I had been digging since Minecraft’s inception. Abiotic provides the essential survival elements like crafting, hunger, resting, and combat in an environment unlike anything the genre has encountered—groups of nerdy scientists ensnared in an underground facility following an incident reminiscent of Black Mesa. It melds cooperative survival with a touch of immersive simulation and sci-fi mystery, and it excels.
Abiotic Factor is wonderfully eccentric. We are approximately on day 85 of the Gate Cascade Research Facility catastrophe. This has amounted to 35 actual hours of gameplay we’ve chipped away at since May. Currently, we are relocating our base from the chemical department to our new site in R&D, and our ensemble of five is unrecognizable from our origins.
Our chef, who previously donned an apron and a chef’s hat that enhanced his culinary skills, is now clad head-to-toe in protective gear crafted from the exoskeletons of interdimensional creatures. Our botanist has upgraded from cultivating tomatoes to taming pet monsters. Our security officer is on an intense mission to elevate her strength attributes by shaking vending machines, lifting couches, and transporting 200 pounds of equipment. Our chemist has recently developed a “tech mace,” and its incredible power is going straight to her head.
Meanwhile, I am a laboratory assistant who recently had an unfortunate accident. The mishap wasn’t entirely my doing—a face-hugging critter had just escaped in our makeshift restroom corner and damaged our sole communal toilet, so when a voice line alerted me that “I really need to use the restroom soon,” it was simply too late. For my scientist, PhD now signifies “poops horrifically downward.”
Defecating is a significant feature in Abiotic Factor, not only because I can collect it and transform it into fertilizer, but because Abio is centered around more than merely surviving—it’s about self-care.
Abio continuously rewards me for engaging in typical human activities—such as getting a full eight hours of sleep—and reprimands me for acting like a survival gremlin. If I venture for too long without a snack, my fatigue increases, stamina depletes more rapidly when I thirst, and my movement slows when I am drowsy. However, if I wake up, drink some water, and eat breakfast like a balanced individual, I activate the hidden “Copacetic” bonus: “You’re well fed, hydrated and in your element. You lose 10% less stamina and recover faster.” That aspect delights me.
I also appreciate Abiotic Factor’s whimsical tech tree designed around its workplace environment. The initial constructions are charmingly DIY: One of the first weapons I assembled was a crossbow fashioned from a meter stick, a chair leg, rubber bands, and markers. The only item that kept me alive during our harrowing initial days in the facility was a cafeteria tray shield. Blueprints require raw materials such as wood, plastic, or tech scraps, yet most designs necessitate a core item that isn’t always easily accessible. You can’t simply mash some plastic and metal together to fabricate a toilet, for example—you must search for a bucket in a janitor’s closet.
What amazes me the most about Abiotic Factor is the rapid speed of its updates. The game has been in early access for slightly more than six months and is on the verge of its second expansion that introduces multiple new sections of the facility, instanced portal realms, and teleportation technology. Amid major updates, developer Deep Field Games has consistently delivered smaller patches that enhance quality-of-life features, refine existing systems, and introduce delightful surprises (like even nerdier ties).
I typically steer clear of games in early access since it can be frustrating to find your rhythm only to hit an “under construction” sign, but that has not been an issue with Abio. We’ve been proceeding at a leisurely pace and still have not ventured into the new areas included in the “Crush Depth” update from a few months past. The game is expanding faster than we can explore it: Deep Field intends to achieve version 1.0 next year with its “Cold Fusion” update and already has plans for what follows.
This is why I didn’t advocate strongly for Abiotic Factor in our end-of-year awards—it genuinely feels as though the best is forthcoming for this already exceptionally good co-op survival title. It’s fairly popular on Steam already, yet I hope that 2025 becomes the year Abio receives all the acclaim it merits.
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