GTFO is a first-person, four-player co-op horror shooter with heavy emphasis on stealth and team coordination. GTFO is a game I’ve had my eye on for awhile, and now that it’s finally in Early Access on Steam I was excited to see if my squad had what it takes.
In GTFO you play as a group of prisoners exploring an underground complex. The long abandoned complex is teeming with zombie-like monsters that can overwhelm and bring your team down in a matter of seconds. At the direction of a mysterious “warden” your team will move through each section of the complex to complete a variety of missions and, hopefully, escape together with your lives.
GTFO is an especially unforgiving game where one wrong move can wipe your team and force you to start the mission over from the beginning. However, while there are many elements of randomization at play, each run will give you a greater understanding and arsenal of information to go back and and try to survive. You’ll need a full team of four to really have a fighting chance in GTFO, and even then, you better be a resilient bunch because this game is not for casuals.
One Wrong Move
For context: my group has been playing games together for years and we’re usually pretty down for a challenge. We’ve run raids in WoW and Destiny 2, had multiple six win+ nights in Apex Legends, and have hundreds of hours in survival games like Ark and Rust. We’re not pro-level by any stretch, but we don’t shy away from challenging content either. Believe me when I tell you: GTFO is brutally difficult.
GTFO is a game about sneaking up on enemies and coordinating timed sledgehammer swings on their faces. If at any point someone misses their swing, swings to early or too late, or aggros anything around you, you’re in for a hell of a fight. A full team can survive a swarm once or twice, but slip up with low ammo or no health packs and your run is definitely going to end.
Basic enemies are alerted when you shine your flashlight on them, make loud noises, or move while their hearts beat. In a crowded room it isn’t uncommon to have to sneak up on an enemy by moving in between the heart beats of 3-5 other enemies. Getting your squad to bash multiple monsters at the same time can certainly help, but it’s also more people that can potentially make a mistake and turn the room into a chaotic blood bath.
Each level has an an objective and, while they vary somewhat, you’ll basically be exploring the level to find an item and then escape. You need to be careful, slow, and very sneaky to preserve health and ammo for the mandatory fights (alarm doors) so levels can take an hour+ to complete. When your team inevitably wipes it can pretty daunting to start the level over again.
Loadouts And Resets
Between each level your team can choose a new loadout to use. You have two weapon slots, a tool, and a melee weapon (which I think are just cosmetic differences) to choose from. Weapon selection comes down to play style mostly, whereas tools determine how you plan on defending against the horde. Turrets, foam launchers, and trip mines can all be deployed strategically before setting off an alarm and bringing a mass of enemies to your position. You can even combine tools, like spraying foam in front of a shotgun turret to slow down enemies and group them up for more effective shotgun blasts.
You’ll discover how to better use your tools as you repeat levels, which is where the reset comes into play. Periodically the complex will reset, reordering the levels and bringing new challenges. The reset may be a week long if there are shorter/fewer levels or it could be several months if the challenges are great. There’s about half a dozen levels available right now but the reset/remix mechanic will certainly help to keep the content fresh during development.
Come Prepared For A Challenge
In GTFO communication and patience are key. I would not recommend playing this game with randos, and in fact, there isn’t even a matchmaking system in the game. You need to be with your friends on discord strategizing your moves and coordinating your attacks if you have any chance of survival. Even if you get a random group in Discord (like in the official GTFO discord where groups meet up to play) I think you might still struggle without a baseline rapport with your partners. Even if you have a group of gaming friends, they’re going to need to be the type that’s OK with failing, trying again, and repeating content. If you have three friends that love Dark Souls as much as you do, you’re gonna have a great time exploring GTFO together.
The game has some really fresh ideas too. I particularly like the computers scattered around the complex that allow you to use command prompts to narrow down the location of the items you’re hunting. It’s pretty obtuse, especially if you don’t have a fundamental knowledge of how command prompts work, but it’s satisfying in a way that makes you feel rewarded for figuring out where to go when you’d otherwise be wandering aimlessly.
I have to imagine it’s a difficult game to balance and that developers 10 Chambers Collective think a lot about fair-hard vs. too hard. Sometimes you can crown a dude with full force on his noggin, pulverizing him from the waste up, and his stupid legs will stumble back into the darkness and alert the horde. That feels too hard to me. We’re very much still learning the ropes and have only gotten to the third layer, but we’re still triggering fights without really understanding how or what triggered it. Ultimately, the hardest part of GTFO might be keeping a group of four motivated enough to keep playing it. So far though, we’re having a blast.
