Abiotic Factor's biggest update to date adds new sectors to explore, plus jetpacks, jeeps, and laser katanas

Everyone loved Half-Life , but back in 1998, no one was brave enough to say, “Okay, what if this was an early-access crafting survival game voiced by a bunch of New Zealanders?” '90s cowards. Abiotic Factor is the bold game that corrects that historic oversight. It's fun, and the fun just got a whole lot more fun. Yesterday's “Crush Depth” update adds a bunch of new areas to the game's chaotic scientific facility, including a dangerous Security Sector and a vast reservoir area called the Hydroelectric Plant. On top of that, there are new weapons, gadgets, workbenches, drivable vehicles, fishing rods, and more. It's all shown off in the trailer below.

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That's pretty dramatic for a crafting sim with a poop minigame. But it still shows off the new places you can explore and the many little features. The jetpack will let you reach strange heights. A fishing rod will let you fish not only in the water, but also in the toxic sludge that appears in some parts of the facility. The laser katana will slice zombie heads off from a considerable distance (see the other video below). And the SUV will let you drive around underground parking lots and possibly “accidentally” run over your friends. Good. Good. These are all very useful objects, scientifically speaking.

The way temperature works in the game has also been overhauled, so the effects of hot and cold environments on your delicate boffin's body are now clearer (a frosted effect on the edge of the screen and such). There are also new ways to deal with extreme temperatures, like sipping coffee to warm up or eating ice cream to cool down. And as a side note, there's a new deployable called the Moisture Teleport, which basically generates water from thin air. Very handy, considering I've been watering all my tomato plants by running around offices looking for water coolers without taps up until now.

There are plenty of other tweaks, too. The game previously added some nasty “weather” types in another recent update – ominous fog, sickening spores, and radiation leaks. But the fog turned out to be “too foggy” and has now been “slightly reduced in density.” The developers also spent some time optimizing performance in some odd areas. “We've broken up some Sectors and recombined them to allow for smaller chunks of the area to load,” Deep Field Games says in an update post. “We can't promise we've fixed all the optimization issues some scientists were experiencing, but we can guarantee one thing: we've given it a pretty good shot!”

Yep, those are the highlights. The game's community manager has put together a helpful and enthusiastic video covering the most important changes and additions. The full patch notes are also available on Steam for those who hate hearing anything other than the human voice screaming in their own head.

For me, the update is perfectly timed. I’ve been playing a retro-style science ‘em up (slowly) with some friends, and we’ve scheduled a playdate for this week. Of the best survival games I’ve tried in years, Abiotic Factor has the most heart. It knows how ridiculous it is to craft usable weapons out of duct tape and scrap metal, and it leans into the absurdity of its genre completely. Maybe my friends and I can get further than the opening sectors this time. I’m sick of that annoying security mechanism in the lobby. So who does he think he is? Bloody robots.

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