Describing a game as “like System Shock” always perturbs me a little. People start to expect a game that equals System Shock, and that’s hardly fair. Also, despite being there day one for Thief: The Dark Project and Deus Ex, I didn’t play System Shock at the time, so I’d feel like I was betraying you if I described a game that way. So I won’t. I won’t say that Athanasia is like System Shock for all those reasons. But damn, it’s a fine thing to play, even in its Early Access release.

Plot: Dinosaurs have taken over a futuristic facility. It’s not in space, and I wish it were, and honestly given that you spend the whole game exploring the vast, metallic complex, you can absolutely pretend it is, but the truth is it’s located in South America. You are Carmen Flores, and you’re here to figure out what happened to all the researchers, and why the place is crawling with dinos. To do that, you’re going to need to do an awful lot of exploration, a small amount of extremely cautious combat, and a whole load of typing numbers like 0451 into computer terminals. It’s all that good stuff, with variant paths, innovative ways to set traps and conserve ammo, and all the furious emails about people forgetting to change their passcodes you could ever wish for.

The retro aesthetics belie a lot of modern complexity. Athanasia has proper physics, meaning you can stack boxes to create paths, or topple swivel chairs over walkways for personal amusement, in a truly enormous game that only very rarely features split-second load times.

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