Athanasia is a survival horror game that features two ancient beasts: dinosaurs, and 90s FPS gameplay. Momentum Games and Neon Doctrine combine tense resource-based puzzle solving with Spielberg-inspired survival horror. 

Life Finds a Way

You play as Carmen Flores, a researcher who is investigating a seemingly abandoned facility due to reports of anomalous activities. Predictably, like many other Y2K-inspired FPS games, the sci-fi warehouse harbors a dark secret. Shortly, it’s revealed to be a laboratory housing prehistoric creatures that have since broken out and began attacking the staff members. Throughout her stay, Flores comes across deceased bodies and voice recordings that often document the individual’s final, terrified moments. 

Toward the beginning of the demo, Athanasia very bluntly tells you that you will be creative or join their fate. Being part immersive sim, a genre that is defined by having player choice in combat and actions such as System Shock or Deus Ex (which Athanasia proudly wears on its sleeve as inspirations), the game has many options for the player to deal with combat encounters. The raptor-like creatures might be clever girls, so you have to be sharper than them. Anyway, there’s the quota for Jurassic Park references that we are legally allowed to give. Let’s talk more about this immersive sim business.   

Shock to the System

In short, an immersive sim has the goal of a linear story and path, but with multiple ways to resolve conflict. Athanasia has a relatively small map that’s crawling with prehistoric and other dangers, but the player is encouraged to know what fights they want to pick, and when to flee from them. 

Inside the facility you find tools. A wrench to jimmy open doors. Meat to be used as bait to distract enemies. Boxes and barrels that can be used as a platform, or to block line-of-sight from the automated sentry turrets. Different ammo for your bolt gun, such as dealing damage or tranquilizing a threat for a short time. There’s plenty of ways to either stay and fight or think outside the box to avoid confrontations. Sure, it can take a few tries–at one point I was stuck on a segment for around thirty minutes across two play sessions–but it does feel rewarding when progress is made.  

Creatures and Features

This review has talked long enough about gameplay. Where’s the dinosaurs? you ask. In Athanasia, the player avoids velociraptor-like creatures lurking the abandoned halls. Bonus points on the creature designs, as they look more like test-tube monstrosities rather than scaly menaces, with diseased skin and open sores. It’s a good balance between recognizability and the unknown with their grotesque look. 

Engaging in either combat or kiting around them is tense, intentionally and unintentionally. Athanasia, as stated earlier, sells the dreadful atmosphere by encouraging you to engage in a fight only when you’re prepared and well-equipped. It takes about three or so chomps to bring you back to the previous checkpoint, and resources spread throughout the facility are in scarce supply as it harkens back to its Resident Evil, or more appropriately Capcom’s underappreciated Dino Crisis roots.

Of course, these are the intentional hardships one encounters in Athanasia. Another adversity as ancient as our reptilian friends joins the journey is some video game jank. Ideally, the raptors prowl around a few paths, which can be manipulated either through the player bleeding or distracting them with a lure or a bolt. At one point, I destroyed a barricade with a molotov that unintentionally destroyed a few boxes that kept the dinosaurs away. Rather than turn to face me, however, they were more interested in walking into a corner of the room and ignoring me entirely unless I got into their “aggro range,” making for a funny sight. There is an instance of one of their heads clipping through a closed door to attack the player, marking a frustrating cheap shot. 

Athanasia is still in its demo phase and is genuinely well-crafted otherwise. Some jankiness is to be expected, and it’s worth bringing up.   

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, Athanasia doesn’t play one-to-one like System Shock or Half-Life, but it does capture the spirit of those classics well. The title aims to play like how you remember those games, replicating the big brain moments serotonin you’d feel when stacking crates together to make a barricade or a stepstool, while still being accessible if challenging for those who didn’t grow up on those games. Due its relative complexity, an occasional bug is to be expected, especially in regard to enemy pathfinding. However, it is a delicately created love letter to survival horror and sim subgenres. For fans of either genre, as it focuses on quick-thinking over cheap thrills, I heavily recommend it. 

Athanasia demo is currently available on Steam. A release date for the full version has yet to be announced.