DERELIKT blends the space horror of Dead Space with the arsenal of Doom and the puzzles of System Shock. Exploring its space station is a blast, even when you have to restart the game.
The moment I heard that someone had unearthed a mysterious object and that people were willing to worship it, my mind went straight to Isaac Clarke. And if you're going to lock me inside a space station crawling with monsters, the least you could do is hand me a plasma cutter. But a few weapons and a quick glance at my keyboard were enough to give me a better idea of what DERELIKT was going for. It's been a long time since a shooter gave me so many reasons to remember what the hell I had mapped to the 7 key.
| Rating | 7/10 |
|---|---|
| Platforms | PC (Steam) |
| Price | $14.99 |
The Station Is Still Terrifying, Even When You're Armed to the Teeth
I'm pretty easy to win over when a horror game looks like this. DERELIKT's creatures benefit enormously from those angular, original PlayStation-style models, especially at a distance, when it's still hard to tell exactly what's standing in front of me. The story surrounding the discovery and its religious undertones was decent enough, although the station itself does far more to sustain the horror than the actual plot. On normal difficulty, I finished with ammunition to spare and probably died about three times. Even so, it took me considerably longer to feel comfortable exploring the station than it did to get comfortable shooting my way through it.
The Doom influence becomes obvious once you start collecting weapons, memorizing their positions on the keyboard, and figuring out which ones deserve their own ammunition reserves. I appreciated that the encounters were varied enough to make me think about which weapon to pull out. Getting up close with a shotgun feels completely different from launching an explosive charge and deciding when to detonate it. I also welcomed the puzzles that break up the firefights. Between those changes of pace and the time spent managing my equipment, I found just as much System Shock and Deus Ex in here as the more frantic shooters of the era.
My Shotgun Had 57 Shells Loaded
I played DERELIKT just a few days before release, and some of the bugs in that version had a considerable impact on combat. My shotgun spent a good portion of the game with 57 shells already loaded. With that kind of capacity, I almost never had to deal with its biggest drawback: leaving myself exposed while reloading. The detonator eventually displayed 67 charges and had the opposite problem. Sometimes I'd launch one at an enemy, press the button, and absolutely nothing would explode. It's hard to judge the balance of two weapons when one performs considerably better than intended and the other only works when it feels like it.
The most frustrating moment came with the battery. The puzzle takes place inside a panel: once you open it, you have to change the direction the cables are pointing to connect the battery's wires to the corresponding + and - symbols. During my playthrough, the battery disappeared, forcing me to close the game and launch it again. What bothered me most came afterward. Whenever I got stuck, I wasn't just wondering what I might have overlooked. I also had to question whether the puzzle was still working at all. I love games that let me figure out solutions on my own, but to enjoy that, I need to trust that the solution actually exists.
Glyphs Make Every Upgrade a Trade-Off
With glyphs, it's worth reading the fine print. Each one can improve certain attributes at the expense of others, so finding a new glyph rarely comes down to simply equipping it and moving on. Some upgrades sound fantastic until you realize just how much they're going to cost you elsewhere. It's one of the systems I enjoyed most because the decision depends entirely on how I play. If the attribute I'm sacrificing happens to be the one I care most about preserving, even the most tempting glyph stays unequipped.
Unlocking the slots needed to equip glyphs requires "insight." During the first few hours, finding a little more of it was enough to justify checking a corner I might otherwise have ignored. By the halfway point, however, I had accumulated so much that I stopped exploring with the same attention to detail. Glyphs were still worth stopping to compare, but the game had been so generous with the resource that another helping of insight barely felt worth the detour.
What's the Point of a Storage Chest If I Can't Put My Lightning Gun in It?
Of the nine weapons available, there are a few I would have happily left behind at the station. The lightning gun tops that list. I'm sure it deals damage, but I could swear the creatures and I were equally unsure about that. The storage chest seemed like the perfect destination for a weapon I'd already tried and written off. Turns out I have to carry every single one, even when I know perfectly well which ones I'm actually going to use. I wish the arsenal offered the same freedom of choice that the glyph system does.
Ammunition management requires an even stranger bit of manual effort. To combine two stacks of the same ammo type, I have to pick one up and press E, despite the game already knowing exactly where it should go. I enjoy organizing an inventory when it means deciding how much space to reserve for shells and how much to leave for medkits. But once I've decided to carry those shells, I'd rather they stacked automatically. And when I actually needed to combine medkits, a bug caused me to lose some in the process.
Big Head Mode Is About as '90s as It Gets
Unlockable cheats bring back one of the most charming traditions from the days of Quake and Unreal Tournament. The classic Big Head mode is here, just in case anyone thought this space horror story was missing a few oversized heads. I got a good laugh out of finding it in a game that takes its atmosphere so seriously.
I also appreciated being able to choose when to indulge in that kind of nonsense. After spending hours sharing a station with these creatures, you've earned the right to laugh at them a little.
Verdict: 7/10
I wanted to complete DERELIKT 100%, which made it all the more frustrating when I fulfilled the requirements for several achievements only to find them still locked. There's a little indie gem hiding inside this station. It knows how to keep things scary even with a shotgun in my hands, gives me plenty of reasons to swap it for another weapon, and lets me adjust my attributes in ways that suit my playstyle.
With a smoother inventory system and its bugs ironed out, I could easily see this being an 8, perhaps even a 9 for people who enjoy these shooters as much as I do. The 7 reflects the version I actually played, one where I reached the end with enough shells for another entire campaign and considerably less confidence that everything would work along the way.