If you’re familiar with Supermassive Games from the likes of “Until Dawn,” “The Quarry,” and “Man of Medan,” then you would be pleased to know that a new entry to the Dark Pictures games is coming out, and this time with a very isolated intergalactic setting.
Directive 8020 aims to encapsulate the classic tropes of Sci-Fi Space Horror, and it ultimately nails it while maintaining the series’ standard Choose Your Adventure style, where your decisions direct the story in hopes of a happy ending, and with the game’s key turning points and rewind feature, you can truly curate the perfect movie for yourself.
And a movie is what it really is; there is limited ‘gameplay’ in the traditional sense, with your control of a character being just a vehicle to explore the surroundings and garner more hints at the lore and events unfolding around you, with some stealth and chase sections to keep your adrenaline up, but the interim gameplay is never the draw for Supermassive Games; it’s the rich characters, the interconnected drama, and the looming threat that every minor decision you make could end in tragedy.
The Controls
While your control is limited to small movement sections and a few jarring QTEs, the story that everything is built on is quite good: A classic sci-fi fare of the unknown, the fear and isolation, and, of course, a growing threat of something not quite, or rather no longer, from this Earth. The game follows the crew of Cassiopeia on a scouting mission to Tau Ceti F in a desperate attempt to secure a future for an ailing humanity, but what awaits the crew on what is meant to be a simple but important mission is nothing that they trained for.
Now I’m personally a HUGE fan of horror as a genre and a medium; nothing gets me smiling more than characters going into that spooky basement, touching the goo, or starting a search with “Let’s split up, guys!” Directive 8020 hits a lot of the classic tropes if you make decisions that lean into it, and that coupled with the almost perfect ambience of the hum of the reactor, the crackling of faulty lights, and the hiss of a door opening that you didn’t activate all combine into such a good atmosphere that I couldn’t help but linger and enjoy it. Coupled with my penchant for exploring anytime I had control, it made for a delightful experience in my play.
The Story
The story pacing for those concerned about length or time dedication will be happy to know it’s smooth; even with my lingering behavior, the most time spent per chapter was just over an hour, and with 8 chapters, this is clocking in at a smooth under 10-hour completion, even longer if you spend more time flipping back and forth through the chapters to pick up all the secrets, open new paths, and save or kill the crew in any way you wish to explore. For those completionists the game does feature a Turning Points menu where you can see the secrets, collectibles, and deaths you’ve unlocked (Which I’ve only unlocked one death out of 44; I gotta have the story-accurate death after all).
The Sound
Now for the ambience, I have to say the audio team put in some extra work for this title; from the sound effects echoing through the halls of the ship, the creaking metal from the ventilation, and even the original music at certain points, it all feels classic sci-fi, and I was enthralled by it given I grew up on horror. I will say though that the major detriment is the music between chapter titles/cards, as I heard more and more tracks, and I could only feel taken out of the entire experience, as some of the tracks seemed incredibly out of place and disconnected with the experience (one of the title tracks’ lyrics was a very colorful description of human ancestors getting kicked from the trees and doing a lot of things with sticks). I couldn’t help but feel the in-betweens were a dev’s garage band or a loose interpretation of music, though the moment I launched the next chapter, I thankfully fell back into the genuinely nice natural ambience.
The Style
As for the graphics and visuals, Directive 8020 still maintains the strange, uncanny valley facial animations during close-up decision-making—not as jarring as it was way back in Until Dawn, but still a bit off-putting. The overall character models and the environmental design, though, have seen a step up from past releases, though much of that could be attributed to the sterile nature of spaceships; I’ll still applaud it because the biological elements and the creature design have been relatively good. The game itself seems well-optimized for my system, though I did experience a crash during a CCTV interaction once during my playthrough. The tech design you see in the game is also nice, surely not as retro-futuristic as you would expect from things like Alien or hyper-advanced like Mass Effect; it sits in a happy middle ground of mostly believable, though just out of current reality, which I found a nice change from the norm.
The Verdict
Ultimately I enjoyed the game during my play; I felt invested in the safety of the team, and I enjoyed leaning into their natural tendencies to make for an engaging story. I played from the position of a horror and sci-fi fan, and as such, I felt it was worth the play. The time spent was short, but for a good story, that’s fine. Though it is better as a movie than a standard game, I do think it’s worth it for fans of Sci-Fi, and if you enjoyed previous Supermassive titles, this is an easy pickup for you. So depending on your personal tastes, this game hovers on the line of “Buy it now” and “Keep your eye on it”; it’s certainly worth taking a peek, though given its heavy story basis, there might be more than a few spoilers out soon.
Directive 8020 hits storefronts on May 12th on Steam, Playstation, and Xbox for $40 and features a Online and Couch Coop mode, allowing you to have a proper movie night with friends very soon!
