Abiotic Factor Is the Best Survival Crafting Game You’re Not Playing

Despite dabbling with Minecraft back when it was still just a Java applet, I’ve never really seen the appeal of survival crafting games. Managing a hunger meter and gathering resources always felt like work, which I was always adamant was not the reason I played video games.

But all that changed recently when I gave in to curiosity and convinced my partner to try out an indie darling called Abiotic Factor. Now I’m questioning my own taste in games.

What Is Abiotic Factor?

Abiotic Factor is a survival crafter that spent around a year in early access, beginning in May 2024. The game received its 1.0 release in late July 2025, at which point it also made its way to the current generations of Xbox and PlayStation consoles (complete with cross-play).

On the surface, it’s a relatively standard survival crafting experience with all the hallmarks of the genre. You’ve got meters for various bodily functions like hunger and thirst to manage, a rich crafting experience to create everything you need to survive, and all the resources you could need to eventually thrive and see the journey through to its conclusion.

The game has a nearly perfect rating on Steam, a fierce reputation among fans of the genre, and has received its fair share of glowing reviews, including a 92 from PC Gamer. And yet, it still feels like barely anyone is talking about it. This may come down to the early access effect, where much of the excitement of a game’s release is dampened by the fact that it’s been broadly available (albeit in an unfinished state) for a while.

A fanfare console release came and went, but it feels like the game received far less attention than it deserved. That’s often the case with indie titles, which lack the funding to market themselves as effectively as projects from large publishers. Whether word of mouth is enough to get Abiotic Factor into some GOTY lists remains to be seen, but so far Abiotic Factor beats out anything I’ve played in 2025.

Why I’m Completely Hooked

Despite being “one of those” survival crafters at its heart, Abiotic Factor feels like a far more directed experience than many of its peers. The game avoids some of the pitfalls that can make other games in the genre feel aimless and open-ended, with a carefully crafted world that’s heaps of fun to explore. There’s no procedural generation here, since the game has a somewhat linear story that you’ll need to progress through in order to advance.

You take on the role of a researcher, admin, and all-around pencil pusher at the GATE research facility, located deep in the Australian outback. It’s your first day on the job, and the second you arrive, things start to go wrong. You start in a state of lockdown in the facility’s cafeteria, which is to become your home for the foreseeable future. You’ll need to figure out how to escape, deal with the anomalies that have taken up residence in your new workplace, and advance through the facility with the ultimate goal of escaping.

If you hadn’t guessed, this is a shameless love letter to the original Half-Life. The game looks, feels, and sounds like Valve’s first-person masterpiece, except instead of taking on the role of a weapons expert super-scientist, you’re a regular guy with bowels that need emptying and a penchant for inventing and crafting things.

In addition to Xen-like headcrab and bullsquid derivatives, you’ll have to deal with “opposing forces” (see what I did there) and environmental hazards if you want to survive. Real weaponry and ammo are rare to come by, but materials to construct traps, blunt weapons, and weird killing machines are plentiful. There are small references to the original Half-Life everywhere, from flooded offices with electrified bodies of water to chambered science experiments that resemble the cataclysmic event that kicked off Gordon Freeman’s adventure.

As a massive Half-Life nerd, I’m in my element. My partner, who never played the original game and who is holding out in the cafeteria alongside me, is just as engrossed. This sample size of two confirms that the game is a modern masterpiece, an almost perfectly paced balance of exploration, base-building, and problem-solving.

Abiotic Factor is chock-full of “hey, we can do this, and later we can do that!” moments that propel you forward on your journey. I won’t pretend that the game doesn’t have its share of things to micro-manage, but the driving force behind exploring more of the facility or taking an expedition to somewhere truly exotic makes for a suitable distraction from the busywork.

Best With Friends, But You Can Play Alone

As mentioned, I’m playing through Abiotic Factor with my partner. We’re sitting next to each other, in the same room, on separate Xbox consoles, and having a blast. The game supports groups of up to six on a single server, though there are some caveats to be aware of if you go this route.

Progress is tied to the server, so if you want to be able to play at different times of day when the “host” isn’t available, you’ll need to host your server remotely. Otherwise, the host will need to be online and playing for anyone else to jump on. If everyone agrees to play at the same time, this isn’t going to present any issues. I’d recommend just playing together to start with, since you can migrate your Windows save (but not console saves) to a server at a later date.

But if you want, you can set up a dedicated server either locally on Windows (with instructions for running a server on Linux supplied by the community) or by paying for a remote server. This would allow anyone to hop on at any time, farm some delicious alien meats, and log off again without the host needing to be present. This is why some people choose to run dedicated Minecraft servers, even when playing alone.

Alternatively, you can play through the whole game on your own in single-player. You’ll miss out on the benefits of dividing labor, but on the plus side, the game will feel a lot more isolating and true to the spirit of the game that inspired it. Since you earn experience in various fields by doing things (like cooking or gardening), you might find this to be a bit more of a grind than having a dedicated cook or a gardener who can get those tasks done more efficiently.

There’s also something to be said for the sense of dread and eeriness that punctuates the experience in general, and playing alone would definitely make things feel a little more intense.

2025’s Indie Game of the Year?

Abiotic Factor has become my new obsession, so much so that I’ve dropped everything else I’ve been playing to spend time barbecuing otherworldly monstrosities and digging deeper into GATE’s ghastly secrets.

It’s the first survival crafter I’ve truly fallen in love with, and I can’t wait to see what the developers get up to next.