GTFO

You’ll realise you have no healing items by default, friendly fire is lethal, and you have precious little ammo

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Developer/publisher 10 Chambers

Format PC

Release Out now

GTFO doesn’t give you a tutorial. It barely grants you the luxury of an identity. Each session begins with the act of brain-hacking your own character, one of many inhabitants of a cryogenic prison called the Complex. The inmate’s medical files paint an unflattering picture: wobbly sanity, missing memories, a high dosage of an unspecified virus. The system advises “retirement”. But whoever this is will have to do. Hold a button to bond with the cerebral cortex, prompting a screech of feedback. Push another to load up the “rundown”, a series of work orders set by an entity called the Warden. It’s a wonderfully grim intro to an enjoyably hideous game: an unconscionable invasion, followed by an unthinkable descent.

The Warden has organised six rundowns – content seasons of around ten missions or “expeditions” – since GTFO launched into Early Access in December 2019. All see you hauled, wheezing, from a pod and plunged into a subterranean realm of dripping laboratories, ruptured blast doors and listing reactors, the setting for a disaster you slowly uncover from logs and environmental clues. If you’re sensible, you’ll have brought three other prisoners to the party, lumpy desperadoes in gas masks wielding guns, hammers and deployable gadgets.