There’s no light. The shuttle that brought me into the depths is fitted with just a shower, and the darkness swallows everything around me. Each step is as painful as the last, like walking barefoot on LEGO bricks, as I narrowly miss traps. Corpses are frozen as I head further down, a reminder of who came before and likely what I’ll end up as. I crack the glass of a small base, crawling through to gain access, shrapnel filling my foot as I sneak through. Infection rises, but with no medicine, it spreads. It gets worse. It gets worse. I die.
That was my first run of Casualties: Unknown. I’ve played a lot of survival games, but few are as brutal, as dark, and as thrilling as this Steam game, which has earned the ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ badge of approval from almost 2,000 reviews, giving it a 97% rating and making it an indie gem. It’s easy to look at its various mechanics and think it sounds challenging, masochistic, and downright terrifying, and those are all accurate. It’s also a game about hope and getting through the hardest times, pushing yourself to become stronger and better.
Let me explain: Casualties sees you play as an ‘Experiment’, the affectionate name given to creatures spliced with human and animal DNA. On an alien planet, your job is to push further into the depths, scavenging alien flora and fauna to craft resources and eventually getting deeper and deeper. However, what makes Casualties so hard is that it has a fully simulated injury and cardiovascular system; one wrong move could leave you dealing with an open wound and nothing to patch it up with.
Every run is as customizable as you’d like. You could make it ridiculously easy, albeit still with some challenge, or you could make it a dreadful experience—it’s entirely up to you. Death is practically inevitable, especially when you’re starting out, but each step you take in subsequent runs builds your knowledge, and eventually, you may even make it to the second layer. There are 11, by the way.
It’s easily one of the best indie games I’ve played, offering a blend of an unforgiving world with a dash of hopeful optimism. And despite just launching, you can grab Casualties: Unknown for just $17.24 / £14.24 at Fanatical. That’s a brilliant launch-day discount, and it easily makes it worth playing, whether it’s out of morbid curiosity or the hope that you’ll eventually beat it.
Good luck, either way.
Disclosure: GameSpot and Fanatical are both owned by Fandom. This story was created in collaboration with Fanatical’s deals team.
