It all begins when you crack out of some kind of shell or egg in a strange lab, appearing as a black creature with four eyes. Nothing explains what you are or what this world is about, but you are not alone, because a nearby robot decides to tag along with you.
The moment you enter the second room, the tutorial already tells you to attack with your spear and dodge. There is no stamina restriction. As for your companion, although you do not control it directly, you can command it to shoot the nearest enemy, but only if you supply it with rare ammo. Interestingly, the robot is present in every room yet never actually walks with you. Instead, it waits in a corner and shivers whenever enemies are present.
Aside from occasional attacks, the robot’s main role is to store the items you collect during your journey. These appear as orbs marked with letters that represent five materials, including water, nitrogen, and biomass collected from defeated enemies. When you walk into an orb, it flies straight to the robot no matter where it is. The same applies to other items such as ammo, mushrooms, and batteries.
You begin with only one health point, though it can be upgraded later. Enemies are similarly fragile and die from a single hit. Combat becomes a matter of timing and learning their behavior, and your target is a red core. Some enemies shoot at you, others can shield, and some hide other surprises you must recognize and prepare for before striking at the right moment. The most challenging are ambush rooms where enemies drop with a shockwave that sends bullets all around.
The good news is that enemies stay dead once you clear a room and reach an autosave point. This activates when you exit and reenter rooms you have already cleared. After upgrading your health, you can also ask the robot to heal you. However, until you unlock a specific upgrade, healing is only possible when no enemies are nearby.
Your task is to explore a complex made up of 277 rooms. The rooms are small and sometimes have entrances hidden on the other side of a wall, which require a special ability or a different route to reach. A very handy map records every new room you enter and shows its exits and key items. It also places a white outline around rooms that have not yet been fully explored.
There are secret exits as well. They do not appear directly on the map except for the white outline, but you can detect them through a dotted line that marks all exits. Some rooms contain crystals that function as quick travel points to any other discovered crystal. They are quite rare, though, so some backtracking is still required.
The five material types become important in seed rooms where you must enter the correct amounts into a computer to grow plants. Solving these puzzles on your own would be nearly impossible, so the game provides hints in unusual ways. You might see colored squares with numbers that need to be matched to the five materials, scan a QR code that leads to the game’s Steam page where a screenshot reveals the answer, or encounter a fake glitch that sends you to the main menu where a clue awaits. These ideas are creative, but they can also become major roadblocks because you cannot progress until they are solved.
Completing the puzzles rewards you with seeds that open key doors leading to new abilities that allow deeper exploration of the facility. The first one, for example, lets you jump directly to the robot, even through walls.
Batteries and mushrooms, on the other hand, are used to purchase upgrades for your two characters. The robot’s upgrades focus on its ammo and gun, while your dark creature gains better dodging, more health, and other survival improvements. However, before you can buy any upgrade, you must first unlock a selection of offers by finding cores.
