DERELIKT

DERELIKT opens with a mystery on Von Neumann Outpost, a research station built into an asteroid orbiting Saturn. Something has woken up inside, the lights are failing, and the people who lived through the disaster disagree about what happened. More than a dozen survivors remain aboard. Each has a stake in the story they tell you. Finding another human being in a dark corridor comes as a relief, at least until you have time to think about what they just said.

Played from a first-person perspective, DERELIKT mixes shooting with the slower work of finding your way around the outpost. You search crew quarters for supplies, explore abandoned laboratories, and solve environmental puzzles to open routes into the station. Getting a door open is a small victory with an uncomfortable consequence. You now have to step through it with whatever equipment you managed to find on this side. The deeper you venture, the more dangerous those trips beyond familiar territory become.

The visuals draw on the original PlayStation, with angular faces, coarse textures, and pools of colored light that give individual rooms a distinct character. A brightly lit doorway stands out against a wall of dark metal. The same shadows that make a corridor look empty can make it difficult to tell how far it extends. Fans of System Shock 2, Alien Resurrection, and Doom 3 will recognize that particular feeling of being far from help, armed just well enough to keep going and curious enough to take the risk.