Abiotic Factor is the best survival game I played this year for many reasons, but one of those is how stupefyingly extra Deep Field Games’ Half-Life-inspired adventure is. Its Black Mesa-esque research facility is so much larger and stranger than it needs to be, and that’s before you get all the strange pocket dimensions you explore on the course of your adventure.
Hence, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that its seasonal update goes the extra mile too, adding a whole new dimension that’s positively aglow with lethal levels of Christmas spirit. The 1.2 patch introduces the holiday cryosphere, a gigantic snow globe that contains a frosted pine forest and a chocolate-box village. It even has its own version of the Polar Express, complete with the vaguely sinister undertones of Robert Zemeckis’ CGI schmaltz-fest.
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Solving the mysteries of the holiday cryosphere will unlock a new home world, letting your scientists relax and conduct their experiments in a cosy mountain log cabin. The update also introduces a few smaller festive features to the GATE Cascade Research Facility, such as snowball fights and a ‘wishing shelf’, where you can, presumably, wish to get rid of that fucking elf that pervs on you throughout Advent.
Not all the features introduced by the update are seasonal. The patch adds a new plantable food, which may or may not be a carrot (I’m not being evasive here, there is genuine uncertainty regarding the status of this root vegetable) and implements a general increase in food buffs so you don’t need to fill your boots, trousers and underpants with soup before venturing into the unknown. There are also a couple of new deployables, and wall-mounted item stands for all those severed heads you don’t know what to do with.
The holiday cryosphere caps off what has been a brilliant year for Abiotic Factor. After releasing several massive updates in a highly dependable early access, the survival game formally launched in July. Morgan Park awarded it a definitive 92% in our Abiotic Factor review, calling it “one of the greatest survival crafting games ever made,” to which I’d concur. If you’re looking for something to play with your pals over the holidays, you won’t find many better games than this.
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