Halloween 2025: Abiotic Factor

Written by Jonathan Wojcik

Abiotic Factor is a game that came out only weeks ago at the time of this writing, and it seems like half the people I know have been playing it. From all that I know of the game itself, it feels like it shares a lot of inspiration with its fellow indie hit Lethal Company and a lot of the SCP wiki, but it most overtly homages Half Life, which in turn was inspired by Stevie Kinger's The Mist. Maybe there's also some Doom and Event Horizon in there, too. And Annihilation. And more! What all of these stories have in common is that some sort of high-tech experiment, usually to do with particle physics or space travel or nuclear fuel, accidentally opens a door to another reality (or several) that nobody knows how to close, and all sorts of things get through that our world was not prepared to deal with.

In most of these stories, most of the scientific staff are the first to go, and most of the rest of them die one by one to communicate the danger of the scenario or move the story along for the scrappier, more down-to-earth everyman heroes, except that one scientist who gets to go mad with hubris and/or some sort of parasite and go down as a memorable villain, that always looked like a sweet gig! Abiotic Factor, however, posits that the people who actually worked on all this super-science might also actually have the ingenuity to hold out for quite some time in a facility already packed with resources they are trained to understand.

So, left to die by upper management and players pick from roles like Phytogenetic Botanist and Epimedical Bionomicist to help their fellow staff endure the combined mayhem of "paranormal containment failure, a military crusade, and chaos from a dozen realms." That's fun!! No wonder half the people I know seem to be playing it.

I haven't played it, but you know that never stops me from having opinions on creature designs.

BONUS: TOP 5 FISH

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