Liam Waddington gets hands on with Negative Atmosphere…
During my one-day experience at EGX Rezzed 2019, I got the opportunity to play a wide variety of promising and unique titles. However, one of the games that grasped me the most was the indie horror game project, Negative Atmosphere.
It has been six years since the release of Dead Space 3, the hit survival franchise by Visceral Games, and ever since horror fans have been asking for a newest instalment (including myself). However, whilst Dead Space is lying dormant on the shelf at Electronic Arts, Negative Atmosphere could be the successor we have been waiting for.
Negative Atmosphere is an indie third-person, sci-fi survival horror game currently in development independently by Sun Scorched Studios – a 20-person team from all over the world. The game is set in the center of a cold war, you play as Samuel Edwards, an ex-combat medic aboard the haulage ship, TRH Rusanov, where a mysterious sickness mutates the robots and personnel into monstrous creatures. Yes, there is obvious comparisons to Dead Space with the on-suit HUD elements, design of the protagonist, the plot details of both games are similar, and the narrow claustrophobic world design – but that’s not necessarily a negative thing.
Although, the slice of gameplay I played at EGX Rezzed represents a few months of work, Negative Atmosphere is showing great potential. Additionally, the project was original started by a solo developer, Calvin Parsons, but now he has a small team and backers on Patreon behind him.
The demo itself begins with you aboard the TRH Rusanov. Samuel Edwards, walks down a spine-chilling, dimly lit corridor. The walls and floor are covered in an enormous amount of blood and gore, limbs and dead bodies are scattered around – a sign with red coloured text reads, ironically, ‘Welcome to Rusanov Med’.
The atmosphere is heightened by the overhead lights flickering on-and-off, except for the minor sounds of machinery, a dreaded silence seemingly looms over you, fearing for the first jump-scare. I pressed forward down the corridor, only to discover a well-placed submachine gun laying on the ground. Turning back on myself, a cleverly-placed humanoid creature lunges out of the darkness towards me, making me jump back in my chair in genuine fear. I suddenly started running for my life, being chased by this menacing creature. Next thing I knew, there were multiple enemies swarming my position from every angle. In sheer panic, I started punching everything in sight but the actions were unsuccessful. I died.
After a few attempts, I was shocked at how challenging and extremely merciless this demo truly is. Although, there is no possible way to speak for the full game, but the level of nostalgia and emotion I felt whilst experiencing this five-minute demo that was reminiscent of playing the original Dead Space for the first time. Additionally, as much as I stated that the demo was genuinely terrifying, at this stage, Negative Atmosphere doesn’t quite capture the constant and overwhelming dread that the Dead Space successfully instills – at least for the first two titles.
You can check out the gameplay demo for yourself here…
How does Negative Atmosphere play? The game has the same third person view with the signature over-the-shoulder seen within the Dead Space trilogy. The combat is also the same by utilizing firearms and melee attacks including the memorable Isaac Clarke stomp. Similarly, to Dead Space, the melee attacks feel near enough useless as they take a considerable amount of time to accomplish and don’t deal much damage to a crowd of enemies. In the demo, there was only one weapon available – a submachine gun – so I can’t talk about if there is a variety of firearms in the full version of the game. However, the one major difference is you don’t have to be as deliberate in Negative Atmosphere as you don’t have to hack off limbs to defeat the creatures.
Another major difference I noticed is the HUD is more detailed in Negative Atmosphere – a mixture of Dead Space and Resident Evil. The holographic HUD still appears on the rear of Samuel’s suit like Clarke’s outfit, but the health bar is displayed as a heart-beat monitor with health descriptors – clearly inspired by how Resident Evil displays their health bars in the menu.
Sun Scorched Studios is currently using a Patreon to fund the ongoing development. However, during a discussion with the developers, they stated, “our plan is to release an hour-long demo by the end of 2019/ early 2020 and launch a Kickstarter at the same time. We want to show people what we’re creating so they can really understand what we’re about before deciding that we’re worth the investment. Depending on its success, we will then start work creating the full game for release in 2021/2022 prospectively”. The developers aim to release the game on PC, Mac and Linux first, with the possibility of releasing on consoles if funding targets are met.
If you are interested, you can follow the game’s progress by visiting the official website that has links to the team’s Twitter, Subreddit and YouTube channel.
Liam Waddington
Originally published April 30, 2019. Updated November 24, 2019.
