When it was first announced at The Game Awards 2017 with a debut gameplay trailer, GTFO was met with a positive response from gamers. Created by Swedish indie developers 10 Chambers Collective whose team is led by Ulf Andersson, known for Payday 1 and Payday 2, GTFO is an intense cooperative horror shooter that will leave players with a healthy fear of the dark and any sounds that might go bump in the night.
GTFO received a surprise trailer during The Game Awards 2021, which detailed its massive 1.0 update as the game is officially released after two years on Steam Early Access. Although a popular title since it joined Steam in 2019, the update has brought with it several fixes to gameplay that players were unhappy with. Now that GTFO 1.0 has officially been dropped and is available to play, gamers should definitely check out the newest version to see all of the improvements, or perhaps to try it out for the first time.
A Breakdown of GTFO
GTFO is a fairly hardcore first-person horror shooter, with an emphasis on cooperative play. Players join a four-strong team of prisoners that have awoken from Hydrostasis with little to no memory of their prior lives or how they got to where they are now. Gamers must navigate a labyrinthine subterranean facility known as the Complex – an underground structure built into the crater formed 66 million years ago when an asteroid strike hit Earth and resulted in the mass extinction of practically all life on the planet. Players must avoid hideous creatures, hunt for resources, and try to stay alive as they attempt to complete increasingly difficult tasks for a mysterious individual called The Warden before they're allowed to escape.
The area has been overrun by terrifying creatures, and players must work together to complete objectives without waking these frightening antagonists. Because once one is awake, they're all awake, and a writhing horde will head towards the group of players in an unstoppable mass until either they're dead or the prisoners are. The gameplay is a combination of incredibly tense stealth and frenetic action, and it is certainly not for the casual gamer who scares easily. It's challenging, punishing, and unapologetically violent.
What Players Can Expect From The Update
Version 1.0 of GTFO has brought some much-needed updates to the game, including a massive change that allows players to use AI bots as companions instead of relying on other gamers to form the four-person scavenger team. This is a big improvement compared to periods during the game's Early Access where it even lacked a matchmaking element, making GTFO near-impossible to complete. With the game's whole tagline being "work together or die together," its emphasis on cooperative play is clear from the outset, but this update allows gamers who might not have any other fans of survival horror in their lives better access to the game.
In another move to open up the game to more players, GTFO has added checkpoints to allow more reticent gamers to jump in. Although these are entirely optional, so any masochistic players looking for a more challenging experience need not worry. GTFO has also added more character customizations that can be unlocked after completing missions, and a wider range of melee weapons is now available to help players conserve their sparse ammo and take out enemies undetected. With new enemy types and improved mechanics, there hasn't been a better time for gamers to come onboard.
With both larger changes and smaller ones, the team behind GTFO has worked to smooth out the game and polish it up until it's a much cleaner, tighter version of its Early Access predecessor. 10 Chambers Collective has refined its vision and brought a really well-crafted coop shooter to gamers. Fans of the horror genre, challenging shooters, or cooperative play should definitely give the game a go.
GTFO is available now on PC.