This has got to be my favorite fictional story *ever*.

The music enhances the story so well I still get sad listening to "Thanks for Everything" and "Encounter". There has yet to be a game that has had any similar emotional response from me as this one, I truly recommend this game for anyone looking for a unique and lasting story with a spectacular soundtrack!

This game has been my new hyperfixation since v5.0.0 of the demo launched on itch.io

I absolutely love the details everywhere! The worldbuilding in the written notes, the PDA's, and in the many fellow experiments you never got to meet alive. The connection you build with the experiment you're now tasked with keeping alive on their death sentence of a journey, and how its all ripped away as your mistakes make you join the hundreds you passed during your descent. It really sells the setting of being part of a cruel test and being one of the thousands sent for the sake of curiosity, for the sake of seeing if a single experiment can actually reach the technology they lost.

The amount of effort put into making the game fair but incredibly challenging just leaves me in awe, every death feels like I could have done something better or I could have managed my inventory better. Every ailment has an indicator that does not require the health panel making chipless a test on knowledge and awareness for when normal or desolate start to feel too easy. The run settings also allow customization of a run allowing the player to choose how they want to enjoy (or not enjoy in the case of max trap runs) their experience, allowing for a wide variety of difficulty options for those who want a bigger challenge or a more relaxed dive.

The medical system is the most advanced I have seen in any game ever! It was daunting at first to find medications or bottles I couldn't recognize with names I had trouble pronouncing, and I had lost a run or 2 to hoping "I hope this random syringe lowers my blood pressure" only for it to be Vasopressin (the only medicine to increase blood pressure in the entire game). But it feels so incredibly rewarding to learn what different medications do and which ones are best to keep on you (Amiodarone my beloved). That sense of accomplishment I have gotten from surviving 5+ problems at once by scrambling together medicines I had on hand or from figuring out new strategies is unrivaled. In one run I used too much procoagulant and got a pulmonary embolism that I fought for 30 minutes by spamming an L.R.D on it until I accidentally learned that using Saline decreases your blood viscosity, saving my life (that may be a useful fun fact for anyone reading this).

And the soundtrack, it sells the atmosphere perfectly. From the droning noises setting in that sense of impending doom to the fast paced panic as you accidentally run into cave ticks again the audio fits perfectly in every scenario and makes every situation pop out by using more than one of your senses to tell you to do something. The soundtrack for fighting and killing the Elder Thornback for example makes the fight feel so alive and the subsequent victory feel so accomplishing

Another thing I really appreciate about this game is the ability to save your run and return to the main menu at the end of a layer, it's something simple but it shows how much thought was put into the player experience.

I am very excited for the full release! The teasers of the lower layers look amazing and I look forward to trial and erroring my way through new environments and enemies!
Until then I will still be playing the demo and trying to beat my depth record (my updated depth record on Normal is now 19712m).

(pls make a plushie of the experiment or of milky one day pls)