Gordon Freeman is a nerd cutting a heroic profile, but in Abiotic Factor, you're just a nerd: a black mesa-like science undergoing unspecified security situations Your job, at least for the first time, is to avoid dying.

In Steam's early access today, the premise of the Abiotic Factor seems to have struck a chord with co-op survival crafting fans: it hasn't hit Steam's top concurrents chart at the time of writing, but has risen to seventh on Steam's US top-sellers list just hours after launch.

I like how much abiotic factors committed to the parody corporate scientist theme of the 90s: the creator of that character has 19 ties, 12 different glasses, 11 and how refreshing it is to play a co-op survival craft game that doesn't immediately ask you to punch down a tree. What is it? A rough equivalent of the abiotic factor is bashing an old beige computer case into bits and harvesting its power. 

About 1 hour after the game, I set up an operational base in the employee break room at one of the office levels of the underground facility, where unscrupulous management activated security You are essentially doing the same thing you do in other survival games — collecting resources and building up increasingly complex things with them — but you can't. Instead of starting as a Stone Age hunter-gatherer geek MacGyver, put some surprises back into the equation. I just figured out how to make test tubes, and I'm curious and a little nervous to find out what they're for.

My goal at the moment is to evacuate the office sector through the manufacturing sector. I haven't explored much, but I'm worried about signs pointing to "animal pens.""Another danger so far, like a jumpy little head club, where I've been awkwardly waving a knife, catching a net, or trampling, is radiation, and I also need sleep, food, hydration, and to make time to use the toilet — in the game, I mean. That's not what my character had to do yet, but it's one of the biometers.

I want to recruit a few other geeks before playing more: Abiotic Factor supports a co-op of up to six people, and it aims for an old-school look, so it's a great job to fuse modern-level design, lighting and UI with just a simple Half-Life1 style model But the sector is not all like the same underground science facility. I'm still in the office, but the Steam page promises a portal to a world that's not like the office.

Abiotic Factor has only a few dozen Steam user reviews that just launched a few hours ago, but so far it has been "very positive" ratings on average. That early access period is expected to last 8-12 months while developers release new sectors and features, but what's out there now is already a "massive, multi-sector adventure," the studio says. 

The attractive price may help the Abiotic Factor to gain a significant audience during the Early Access period: its regular Early access price will be$25, but it's being sold for2220 for launch. You can find it in steam.