This is a perfect example of why I try to give every game that looks interesting a chance: sometimes I find something I really like that is very unpopular. I was able to finish the game with the ASMI ending (which is terrible, but more on that later) in 3.2 hours, so the game is pretty short. However, it's pretty replayable which I will touch on.

So what this is, basically, is a very stripped-down System Shock 2 with randomized elements. Before you get too excited, I mean the plot and shooting is reminiscent of system shock 2, not anything else. The ship is made of 23 maps that I know of, and you shuffle between them trying to complete objectives to reach your desired ending. Resources respawn in the same places but enemies are randomized, which means victory can sometimes feel like a crapshoot or that the developer didn't want to properly balance the game. There are a lot of environmental cues to pick up on and exploration is required to find different items, audio logs or characters. All of the voice acting is amateur and the audio logs are local to the terminal they are accessed on so you can't play audio logs while you continue to play, which is not good. There are also no subtitles for anything, so big warning for the hearing impaired; I myself was barely able to follow along. However, the plot is decent even if derivative and the atmosphere is very good, even if there is far too much blood to be reasonable.

About the story: ASMI is an artificial intelligence that wants you to bring the ship back to earth. Her route gives you easy access to the armory early on as well as other areas that are normally locked. However, her route is more boring; for one thing, I was never sent into personnel at any point. For another, all of the survivors become hostile to you when you go on this route. Something else to note is that you are locked into the ASMI route *as soon as you touch her console at the beginning of the game*. Do NOT do this. There might be an opportunity to get out of it later however I did not want to risk it as by that point all the survivors were hostile to me. The other characters have dialogue and give you objectives, and there are other endings you can get where you escape with one of the crew members. I recommend trying for one of these.

I have a couple thoughts on the mechanics. First, the gunplay is... not great. I do feel like you have the tools required to fight the enemies for sure, but the animations and sounds aren't brilliant. It works though, even if the early weapons get completely outclassed later. Secondly, the fact that all pickups respawn means that once you know where certain things are or have access to the armory, you just end up making a couple pit stops at the armory and/or medical before you go anywhere. This is fine, but it's not very horrific. A big part of survival horror is limited resources, and the resources here are infinite; there's just a limit to what you can carry and there is no way to heal on command. Thirdly, the inventory is a great idea. It gives you the ability to assign all of your weapon quickslots, so when that pistol gets outclassed or the MK3 assault rifle is no longer useful you can move the shotgun or MK4 into that slot. It's also interesting because the weapon attachments being bound to specific weapons makes your weapon choice more complex than usual. Fourth, the enemy design is remarkably varied but I think slightly underutilized. Most of the enemies I ended up fighting by the end were the big insect monsters which are powerful but very boring. There were a couple enemy types that I only ended up seeing once or twice and while this could be down to the random spawn elements I think that rng might need some tweaking. Finally, why are there only two save slots?? There is a quicksave you can drop anywhere and the autosave. Why aren't there manual hard saves? This is one of the biggest problems I have with the game design.

In addition to the story, which is the only thing I have discussed, there are 3 other modes. I don't know if these are any good and don't really intend to play them, but they include a horde mode, some challenge modes and a survival mode.

As for technical issues: I didn't run into many bugs but the small health packs did not work for me for whatever reason, and I had 2 hard crashes which my computer DID NOT LIKE. I was not able to get out of the window at all to interact with my desktop. Win+Tab did nothing, Ctrl+Alt+Del did nothing, just had to restart everything. For this reason I recommend playing the game in windowed mode. No other bugs, just general jank which I think the atmosphere makes up for. The game is also kind of unoptimized so note that if you have a potato.

Ultimately, I really really enjoyed the game. I did not pay full price, but bought the ghostship bundle. I would not have paid full price seeing the screenshots and there are too many qualifiers to the experience for me to give it a blanket recommendation at that price. You really have to be willing to put up with the jank, be willing to die a lot, and enjoy exploration with minimal hud elements to be able to enjoy the game. If that sounds like you, I think you should give this a shot.