10 Chambers isn’t new to game development. The company is comprised partially of founding members of Overkill Software and the game designer behind the PAYDAY franchise. For some time now, the team at 10 Chambers has been hard at work on a new experience, GTFO. A while ago, I got an early build of GTFO and spent a few hours in it. At the time, it was clearly a game still in development, full of things like unfinished textures, stiff animations, and the occasional crash. At its core, there was solid gunplay, an eerie atmosphere, challenging scenarios, and a push towards cooperative play. That last one is the most intriguing to me as a lover of cooperative games whether it be Turtles in Time, Diablo 3, Monster Hunter, or Back 4 Blood; I love cooperative games.
Combine that with the popularity of challenging gameplay, thanks to the likes of Dark Souls and Hollow Knight, GTFO may be in a unique position to break into the over-saturated FPS genre in a powerful way. The main question at hand is have they ironed out the kinks and delivered an experience worth your money and time? Well, I had the wonderful privilege of traveling to San Francisco to meet with the 10 Chambers team at the Unity offices and be one of the first to play GTFO 1.0 version.
Full disclosure, my travel and much of my food were covered. However, I am not being paid for my opinions, time, or writing by 10 Chambers or Marooners’ Rock. I am a volunteer writer. With that out of the way, let’s go on an adventure and GTFO!
Experience with GTFO
As the name GTFO suggests you are in fact trying to get out and the tagline “work together or die together” is indicative of the experience. Taking place in an underground facility, four prisoners must make their way through the labyrinthine series of rooms in order to well GTFO. Each of these room sets are called Rundowns. In order to get through each of these Rundowns, players must work together to locate keys, unlock doors, find items all while navigating through rooms full of monsters that can be disturbed by both light and sound.
Considering ammo can be scarce it is wise to carefully coordinate with teammates and sneak through using a melee weapon to take them out one at a time while they are sleeping. It is frustratingly easy to wake them though as flashlights, movement, crouching, standing, and of course, shooting while a monster is “listening”, indicated by a red glow, will likely wake every monster in a room. There are of course moments where major encounters are inevitable as certain tasks make noise and draw them to you.
If that wasn’t bad enough, sometimes these doors require all four players to gather in a single spot to be scanned while this happens. Other times, it’s spread out and you must split the party to hit each point. All these points towards cooperative gameplay. You simply cannot progress without all four players coordinating. There’s nothing to gain from running off and abandoning a fallen player.
How is it?
So the main question is, how is it? It is fun! I had a lot of fun playing the game. I could tell immediately that they’ve done a lot to polish the experience. Everything felt tighter, character customization has been added, melee weapons are no longer simply cosmetic now; different weapons have different pros and cons, the variety of guns and tools allow for different strategies, and of course visually everything looked better. The detail on guns, the grossness of the monsters, even the nice touch of certain light angles show small scratches in the players full-face helmets.
I enjoyed the game’s challenges and working together to overcome those challenges or at least attempt to. GTFO features some of the best build and growth of game mechanics I’ve seen in a while. A perfect example is the scans that unlock doors. Initially, it just calls for all four players to be in the circle, then at a later time many circles sprawl out and must be touched by at least one player. Then at the end of the Rundown, the circle actively moves around the area while requiring all four players to stand within it to make progress. Of course, this happens while swarms of enemies come at the team from all directions quickly emptying ammo and resources.
All this is done intuitively and shown rather than text on screen or tutorial. This helps enhance the immersion of the experience of GTFO and adds to the challenge and the spooky and claustrophobic environment of the underground facility. To help carry the game through multiple Rundowns in an underground facility without getting visually or mechanically stale, new monsters and challenges are introduced offering their own strategies to overcome.
Challenges to Overcome
Unfortunately, not everything is so clear and there are moments that are cryptic and can prove to be a barrier for new players. My experience was greatly helped by having an experienced player (and a 10 Chambers employee) with us. Using the terminals is a big example of this as they are essential to finding various items and know where to go but require manually typing in commands and a crew of four new players may not know that or know where to find those commands within the terminal.
Figuring out what does and doesn’t wake up the monsters would also be a challenge without someone there specifically guiding us. It can be argued that this enhances the challenge and adds to the cooperative element encouraging veteran players to help new players but it can also easily become a barrier of entry that may have some players giving up the game earlier than they should; as it is in fact a fun experience that promises to deliver new challenges and content as time goes on.
The game ran very well on the machines in the Unity office, with high resolution and frame rate with detailed textures and lighting. The only hiccup I noticed in gameplay was that at times the monsters appeared to be at a lower frame rate than the rest of the game. It didn’t feel like frame rate dropping or a performance issue as I never noticed anything amiss in my aiming or movement or even in other players it was only in the monsters and when there were a lot of them on screen. It’s overall a minor thing and never hindered my gameplay and only stood out as a result of how smooth the rest of the experience was.
Discord & Interview
New players are encouraged to join the GTFO discord full of helpful people ready to assist novices.
Following my gameplay session, I was able to sit down and interview David Wärnberg, Master Creative (amazing title) at 10 Chambers about GTFO.
“Everything we do is centered around cooperative gameplay. If we are working on something that doesn’t add to that experience or takes away from that we cut it and work on something else. We want our players to build community and tackle the challenges we offer together. The Rundown system allows us to regularly change out what is available and that creates a camaraderie within our community as there is always a new challenge to overcome. Every player, new and experienced, is solving the same problems. We are very excited to show players what we have in store in future Rundowns following the release of 1.0.”
-Dave Wärnberg Master Creative at 10 Chambers
New Features
GTFO 1.0 has a number of exciting new features.
- player bots (for players who want to experience the game solo or when its tough to find a full party)
- customization in characters
- checkpoints
- improved matchmaking
- updates to rendering
- a refined animation system
- and more!
VGA Announcement
“We have exhilarating Rundown drops planned for 2022, where we want to continue to challenge our players with the unexpected. With version 1.0, we are just starting to bend the limits of what GTFO can be, and I don’t want to spoil anything but play the game – you will understand what I mean. Our list of ideas for new horrors, puzzles, and tools is extensive, so I am genuinely excited for the coming years of GTFO”
-Hjalmar Vikström, Game Design Director at 10 Chambers.
GTFO 1.0 was surprisingly announced during the annual Video Game Awards. Officially bringing the game out of Early Access. So if you already have the game you can jump in and experience the official release otherwise you can find the game on Steam for $39.99 but for a limited time, it will be 25% off! If you love challenging gameplay and working with others GTFO may be exactly what you are looking for.
Catch the GTFO 1.0 VGA trailer here!
