The Callisto Protocol deserved more. A spiritual sequel to Dead Space, despite some repetitive set pieces and fussy gun combat, Striking Distance’s debut survival horror had a great melee system, a supremely well-drawn setting, and some smart ideas. Reviews weren’t bad, but commercially the game struggled, and in August 2023, Striking Distance laid off more than 30 developers. Nevertheless, the studio has survived, and now it’s making a comeback with the newly revealed Redacted, a roguelike shooter set, somewhat strangely, in Callisto’s own Black Iron Prison. Formerly trailed as Project Birdseye, this is now a fully fledged game unto itself, and it looks superlatively stylish.
The Black Iron Prison of The Callisto Protocol is a grim, bleak, claustrophobic sci-fi dungeon where every patch of shadow potentially masks something ready to kill you. In Redacted, Striking Distance’s roguelike game, Black Iron is reimagined, and feels more like a gladiatorial arena, or maybe even a skate park.
The premise is simple: an extremely deadly contagion has turned the majority of Black Iron’s occupants into flesh-hungry monstrosities, and there’s only one escape pod. Not only do you need to battle your way through waves of enemies, upgrading your weapons, abilities, and spacesuit as you go, you also need to sabotage the efforts of your three rivals.
See, you’re not the only survivor. Other Black Iron denizens, either staff or inmates, are making a beeline for the escape pod, too, and you need to either slow them down or stop them completely. On the bottom of your screen in Redacted is a progress bar that shows how close you are in relation to exit and to your rivals.
If they’re getting too close or they overtake you, you can spend points to cut them off – for example, you can use one of Black Iron’s automated defense systems to spam them with gas grenades, bringing their run to a temporary halt while you cut on ahead.
Alternatively, you can face them head on, thus heralding one of Redacted’s various boss battles. You can also spend your earnings on hacking the Black Iron personnel files and uncovering secrets about your competitors, which will expose their vulnerabilities and weaknesses. This, of course, is why it’s called Redacted – the better the combos you string together, the more points you earn, making it easier to access or unredact your rivals’ dossiers, and giving you the edge in reaching that all-important escape pod.
But there’s one more obstacle. If (when) you die and lose your run, the next time you play, you’ll have to fight your own reanimated corpse. Normally in a roguelike, you can just power up as much as possible without needing to worry, but in Redacted, the stronger you are in one run can make the next one way harder.
Frankly, this couldn’t be much different from The Callisto Protocol – they use the same setting, but it’s nice to see Striking Distance attempt something different. The Redacted release date is set for Thursday October 31. You can wishlist it on Steam right here.
Alternatively, get a load of the best upcoming PC games on their way to you, or maybe the best horror games if you want something a bit closer to Callisto.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or grab our PCGN deals tracker to net yourself some bargains.