Deep Field Games' indie "survival crafting experience" Abiotic Factor has been doing a bit of alright lately. It came out a couple of weeks ago, and is currently showing as "Overwhelmingly Positive" on Steam. It might not be setting the Top Sellers alight (it's cur??rently at number 56), but it's been selling pretty well, make no mistake.

In a recent post on X, the team behind Abiotic Factor were excited to announce that the game had sold more than 250,000 copies since launching on May 2. To go along with this, there's also a message posted to the Steam page that gives thanks for this 11-day achievement.

It's always a positive moment when an indie outfit gets to see th?e fruits of their labor reach lofty heights. It's a tough ol'?? world out there in Video Game Land, so it's encouraging to see these bursts of non-AAA titles have their moment in the spotlight, even if it's sometimes short-lived.

Half-Life meets Rust

For those who haven't played it yet, Abiotic Factor is essentially a survi?val sim with crafting elements??. It tasks 1-6 players with working together "against the universe's biggest threats." The story reads thus:

As a GATE employee you extend the bounds of hum?an knowledge, and seek to explain the unexplainable - including anomalies and paranormal entities: from gravity-distorting artifacts to supernatural creatures with an unbridled instinct for violence. Safety, security, and secre?cy are of the utmost importance�usually.

Thematically and almost visually, it takes a lot of cues from Half-Life, Valve's maiden release ?from back in the day that went on to become one of the most influential first-person shooters in gaming history. Who wouldn't want a piece of that action?

Developer Deep Field Games also released the "First Week" update a few days ago. There's also a roadmap showing w?hat's being planned, which includes a Crush Depth update coming this ??summer, as well as a Halloween patch. Marvelous.

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Abiotic Factor takes place in an underground research bunker packed with paranormal phenomena and little means to survive. A containment breach and syste??m fai?lure inadvertently flood the facility with even more supernatural enemies, military sects, and otherworldly portals, so you'll need to hunker down and bolster makeshift defenses. That's not easy when resources are so scarce.

Among the rarest resources are Power Cells. Only a handful of these little treasures exist in the entire game. Worse, there is no recipe to craft them from lesser materials. Regardless, they are essential to building firearms and other survival needs. Luckily, Abiotic Factor has a few ways to slowly build your stock.

Abiotic Factor main story, enter Flathill for Power Cells

The most direct method is the main narrative. Early story objectives involve collec??ting Power Cells, and these quests unfold in a li??near manner. Basically, the game tells you where to go and what to do in the early hours. Eventually, you need to get past a locked door into Silo 3. This involves hacking the door with a specialized tool, which itself requires three items: an LCD Screen, a Controller, and an Infrared Emitter.

Once you finally clear the way, you ca??n enter a portal to Flathill. This misty settlement has three Power Cells lying around. That may not sound like much, but you only need to wait a while.

After a certain amount of time, a temporal anomaly causes the portal worlds to reset. This replenishes all the items in the area, including the Power Cells. You can just go back and pick them up again. Granted?, that's a royal pain, but it's a foolproof method. For those who don't feel like waiting, though, Flathill isn't the only place t?o get these goodies.

Find Power Cells in the Manufacturing area

You can also acquire Power Cells in Abi?otic Factor's Manufacturing area. This is what starts the little scavenger hunt in the first place. A wounded man named Grayson tells you that the Manufacturing sector is a possible escape route. To get there, you need to open the path via a forklift. However, this device actually requires one of the Power Cells found in Flathill.

Yes, this is a roundabout process, but it's all worth the hassle. The Manufacturing sector has a few more Power Cells to collect. Plus, once you open these two zones, then you can access them at any point. With the aforementioned temporal reset respawning the items, you could scoop up several Power Cells in an endless cycle. It may bog the game down in grinding, but it ensures that you never run out of these valuables in Abiotic Factor.

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My relationship with survival crafting games is like on?e you may have with an appetizing but bad-tasting food �think black licorice. You might think, "My taste has changed a lot in the last few years, I bet this is really going to do it for me now!" only to take a bite and twist your face in revulsion. That's me and survival games.

I keep trying games in the genre, and I keep glazing over and quitting in mere hours (as do my frustrated friends, to whom I always hastily recommend said game). But Abiotic Factor is, so far, a much different story.

To me, the world in which I'm being asked to survive is just as important as the survival mechanics themselves. I've survived in so many forests, caves, and even oceans that, at this point, I'm just sort of sick of the usual suspects. I don't want to make a mattress out of logs and leaves - I want to repurpose an ugly sofa into a bed. I refuse to distill any more rainwater - I'd rather collect it from water coolers in hallways. Pens as crossbow bolts. Chair cushions as makeshift armor. Vending machines as hunting grounds, rich with a variety of salty and sugary species. That's Abiotic Factor.

Taking place entirely in a simulacrum of Half Life 1's Black Mesa, you play as a pencil-pushing scientist that you'll customize both aesthetically and mechanically through a very Project Zomboid-style perk and class selection. The ??hand-crafted map, even in Early Access, is massive and stunningly detailed, with unique resources and surprises hiding around every questionably-carpeted corner.

Trees, rocks, and streams suit the naturalism typical in other survival games, but it's so satisfying to walk into an industrial, prebuilt space, flick on the tactile light switches, and rummage through some filing cabinets. It's my favorite genre of survival: something I call "Pick-'em-Up" games. Prey (2017) is the shining example of this. Now that was a good Pick-'em-Up - you could even break down whole rooms into little cubes of material to hoover up into your inventory. Abiotic Factor nails this ??feel, as you smash apart whole computer terminals into an explosive confetti of various?? bits and bobs you'll snatch from the ground like a starving animal.

There's combat, of course, and while beating a hostile alien hound to death with a metal pipe feels surprisingly good, it's best approached i??n a more thoughtful manner. Crafted traps, explosives, and ranged weapons make use of the game's interlocking, nearly immersive??-sim level systems. Just don't forget to carve their corpses up with a chef's knife for parts.

From baiting enemies into spinning saw traps to warming yourself up by a makeshift heater while the power shuts down for the night, there's a very immersive sense of physicality to the affair that I feel many titles lack. You can watch the temperature change in real time, using your digital watch, as you move from room to room. Your character will complain about cold or hunger in that quintessential Half Life scientist cadence. And while hunger and thirst don't g?naw to the point of annoyance, it can be pretty tricky to figure out how to squeeze resources out of a concrete bunker filled with hostile life?forms.

Along with temperature, things like radiation, "dryness," and other elements will affect your character's frail body. It is, once again, very reminiscent of Project Zomboid's survival systems that approached Dwarf Fortress levels of thoughtfulness. Aprons can prevent you from being coated in fluids, while more protective threads can shield you from radi?ation. You'll always have your little scientists' presence in the world in the back of your mind, and it makes sneaking around and resource gathering feel even more ?tense.

And, of course, the multiplayer sh?ines fantastically. With up to fi?ve of your friends you can delegate tasks, choose different "builds," and conquer the GATE facility level by level. If you need any more motivation to ask a buddy to join, I present this image of my friend coming to heal me with our only syringe after a long day of exploring:

Abiotic Factor just feels like one of those classic labors of love. Steam players, like truffle-hunting pigs scouting their next prize, have honed in on the title, skyrocketing its player count to over 15,000 concurrently and reviews to a 97% "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating. After the creator Geoff Keene's unfortunate experience of being "Among Us before Among Us" with his last title, Unfortunate Spacemen, it's a deserved, if belated, blowup.

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