Abiotic Factor and Keep Driving - My current obsession
Every once in a while a game comes along that completely clicks with me, and I entirely obsess over; a game that gives me a feeling early on that I'll be playing for a very long time. Just my luck, then, that two of these games would happen to fall into my lap within a week of each other. Abiotic Factor, a First-person survival-simulator that takes heavy inspiration from 1999's Half-Life, and Keep Driving, a game that somehow turns 2012's spacefairing FTL: Faster Than Light into a down-to-earth cross-country road trip, are already on their way to high seating on my Game of the Year list (Abiotic Factor is still in Early Access so we'll see what happens by the end of the year, but I have a good feeling).
Abiotic Factor entertains an interesting question about Half-Life: While Gordon Freeman was running around the Black Mesa Research Facility, fighting aliens and stopping the end of the world, what were the scientists doing? As a fledgling researcher at GATE, an experimental science facility suddenly undergoing an extra-dimensional invasion of its own, you're presented with two questions: How will you escape? Failing that, how will you stay alive?
I had heard about Abiotic Factor for a while. Just about any reddit post asking for recommendations for a good survival game had the game sitting somewhere near the top of the list, if not right at the top. I was never a huge fan of survival games - I run out of things to DO all too quickly. Base-building was never my thing, and wilderness exploration never really satiated my need for finding new, weird things. Still, the idea of a survival game taking place not in a landscape but in an office building seemed interesting, and the Half-Life art style had me curious. I waited for a good enough sale (which happened to appear last week), and pulled the trigger.
What surprised me most is just how closely Abiotic Factor feels like a Half-Life game, while at the same time subverts my expectations right when I start to get comfortable. The starting area of the game is a pretty innocuous office space that has you scavenging pipes, computer parts and duct tape to make crude weapons, traps, and armor. Soon I found a portal that led me to a strange, purple jungle. "Oh!" I thought. "This is Xen! From Half-Life!" And it was, more or less. Later on I found another portal and stepped through, expecting another foray into definitely-not-Xen.
And then I realized this area definitely isn't Xen.
And then I realized this area definitely isn't Half-Life anymore.
I'm about 14 hours into Abiotic Factor and I'm constantly browsing the wiki, riding the edge between wanting to spoil something and wanting to leave the mystery intact. There's so much to explore in this game, every corner of every hallway as likely to lead to a benign locked office as it is the maw of some horrible, extraterrestrial nest.
Keep Driving, on the other hand, keeps things pretty realistic by comparison. It's sometime in the early 2000s, and you get a letter from a friend inviting you to a music festival on the other side of the country. You have a car, some money, and nothing else to do so you pack up and start heading eastward.
I had originally thought Keep Driving would be a by-the-books roguelike, a game that encourages failing, starting over, and learning from your mistakes. It does have those aspects in some amounts, with each ended run unlocking new vehicles, starting inventory, or backgrounds to choose from for the next trip. But Keep Driving is so much more than that, which to me was the game's most wonderful surprise.
The map is huge, and completely open to you. You can change your mind, double back and go in a completely different direction if the road calls you that way. You'll pick up hitchhikers with vague names like "The Musician" or "The Punk", each with their own skills and annoyances to affect your drive. Some will come with their own quests that you can follow or ignore completely if you choose. Some of these quests will be simple stops, others may come with their own endings. One quest in particular - given by a hitchhiker simply titled "The Idiot" - is already a standout favorite, a sudden gut-punch that highlights the quality of writing waiting to be uncovered.
Keep Driving's little moments like that are what make the game really special to me. The majority of the game is about managing resources like gas, energy, or your car's durability, stopping at rest stops to get food, duct tape, or the occasional upgrade if you can really afford it. It's the sudden, unexpected bits of texture that make the game so much more than just a roguelike road trip simulator. Hitchhikers all gain experience the longer they drive with you, unlocking new abilities to help you out during events. One hitchhiker I started to grow fond of suddenly became "creepy" after getting to know him better, which halted the XP gain of any female hitchhikers I might also have in the car. Another person I picked up has some really strong mechanical benefits such as shoplifting an item anytime I enter a store, but comes with the drawback of narratively being a terrible influence on my character.
Over time you'll unlock new music and car upgrades that carry over each time you start a new trip, making it more likely you'll reach the east coast music festival. But based on the massive number of new quests, alternate endings and strange people you'll meet on the way, Keep Driving proves that the journey is just as important as the destination.