Abtos Covert review

Don't write it off

Abtos Covert is a first-person horror game with a formula that I found fun, but a little hard to articulate. Not because it's a complicated game, but because it was released in an era where gamers decide if a game is for them or not before they buy it. They scrutinize trailers and discuss gameplay mechanics without actually experiencing the game as the creator intended. Maybe that works for movie trailers, but for games that are immersive products by design, you need to get a taste of that design first, and this is especially true in Abtos Covert's case.

Abtos Covert begins with you getting hired as a lookout soldier at an outpost in the middle of nowhere. You learn the ins and outs of your job on the fly from your superior over the radio, and the tapes and notes left behind by your predecessors become your guide in navigating the intricacies of the job and the lore of the game.

The responsibilities involve interacting with monitors, buttons, and various elements to ensure your survival throughout the five nights of your assignment. And while you might be tempted at first to dismiss the game as a generic Fnaf-style horror rip-off, Abtos Covert thankfully transcends such trite categorization thanks to its addictive time constraints and immersive landscape.

The long nights

During your first night shift, you'll discover that there's a lot to take in and do in a very limited amount of time. You must listen to your superior's radio instructions, learn the inner workings of the outpost, and absorb all of his strange precautions and horror stories all while keeping an eye on the sensor for enemy alerts and other outpost facilities. It’s definitely not the most hand-holdy game in terms of designing tutorials or dumping lore as it all happens in real time as you play.

Behind you is the kettle whistle giving you a surprise headache, and in front of you is the CCTV monitor showing zombified abominations roaming about and creeping closer. You quickly realize that you need to shine your perimeter lights on them to shoo them away, and yet a power outage could happen at any time and you find them crawl ing inside your house, behind your back, and even inside the cameras and vents. Your time simply becomes a delicate balance between fending off threats and exploring the mysteries of the outpost through notes and tapes.

On the second night and beyond, the gameplay loop’s complexity goes up beyond simply managing the perimeter lights. Vents in the house become potential entry points for other entities, and the available power may not last all night. There's also a little girl crawling who can get inside vents and hiding lockers just fine, as well as brutal werewolves who can skip certain steps to gnaw at you in an instant. These challenging enemies and their unpredictable attack patterns combined with the random flickering lights and malfunctioning sensors require you to be at the top of your game every single second if you don't want to meet a swift end.

Dog soldier

The unpredictability of Abtos Covert is one of its greatest assets. The first four nights can occur in any order, and upon losing and clicking replay the player faces the uncertainty of not knowing which enemy will attack and in what night pattern. Each enemy also follows a distinct attack pattern or script similar to pretty much any rogue experience. These elements may feel rehashed and unoriginal, but their combined and randomized execution on top of forcing players to adapt to the unique sound of each device and monster are definitely things you can't just read about on the Steam page or feel from watching YouTube trailers.

The werewolf subplot introduced on Night 4 in Abtos Covert also brought back personal memories of the movie "Dog Soldiers''. Looking back, it was just a slasher comedy about soldiers being torn apart by werewolves and that energy is present here in the game. But the final reveal of the movie used the clichéd setup to structure a good ending twist that made it memorable for me. Abtos Covert cleverly does the same with its final scene, and the other notes and tapes will make you look back on the experience as more than the sum of its parts.

Still, I would advise players to temper their expectations, as the amount of content Abtos Covert offers is not that much. Aside from the 3-5 monsters, five nights, one ending scene, and another hidden cutscene, there's not much else to take away from this game. It's good at what it does but more modes or locations utilizing the same formula would have been nice, or something that adds a replayability factor like different playable characters or time attack modes.

If you are looking for a two-hour lycanthropic take on the usual Fnaf formula with some dark war subtext in between, this game excels at doing that. The collectible tapes in particular had me change my initial opinion about the monsters being only there for jump scare purposes and the whole Greek army thing definitely played on my fondness for historical fiction stories.

The fact that the game is technically polished with lots of resolution and graphical options also worked in its favor and my medium PC happily approved. I recommend that even if you read about the game you try to get into the flow of the game and enjoy it for what it is and don't expect anything from it before you try it and you'll definitely enjoy it.