[REDACTED]

When Striking Distance Studios released The Callisto Protocol in 2022, it was met with a lukewarm reception that focused heavily on its sluggish movement and technical stutters. It felt like a studio trying too hard to recapture the lightning of Dead Space without understanding the modern landscape. Now comes [REDACTED], released October 27, 2024 and published by KRAFTON, Inc. — a title that is as much a meta-commentary on the studio’s journey as it is a frantic, top-down roguelike. By stripping away the self-serious cinematic weight of its predecessor, the developers appear to have unearthed a lean, mean, and surprisingly deep dungeon crawler that stands on its own merits.

Set within the same brutal Black Iron Prison on Jupiter’s moon, Callisto, you don’t play as a hardened soldier or a cosmic hero. You are a modest prison guard caught in the middle of a catastrophic biophage outbreak. Your goal is singular and desperate: reach the last escape pod. The shift in genre from survival horror to a twin-stick roguelike lets the game lean into a “punk rock” aesthetic that feels vibrant and alive, a sharp contrast to the drab greys and browns of the main game. The spin-off format lets it totally reimagine the world’s atmosphere. The market for roguelikes is currently suffocating under the weight of Hades clones, but [REDACTED] carves out a niche by focusing on speed, rivalry, and a refreshing lack of pretension. It’s a smaller, more focused project that suggests Striking Distance is far more comfortable when it isn’t trying to carry the weight of a AAA blockbuster on its shoulders.

• The Rivals System: A real-time competitive layer where NPC survivors race against you to reach the escape pod, actively sabotaging your run or engaging in lethal duels.
• Fight Your Last Corpse: A mechanic that forces you to defeat the reanimated, fully-equipped version of your previous character to reclaim gear and upgrades.
• Punk-Rock Visual Identity: High-energy, graphic novel-inspired aesthetics paired with a pulsating, aggressive soundtrack that defines the game’s frantic pace.

The core of [REDACTED] is built around kinetic movement. Where the original Callisto was criticized for its “tank-like” movement, this guard is designed to move with a lethality that feels earned. The gameplay loop is a rhythmic blend of twin-stick shooting and visceral hack-and-slash combat that rewards aggression over caution. You aren’t hiding from the monsters; you are the one clearing the room.

The Competitive Loop

The standout innovation here is the Rivals system. In most roguelikes, the environment is your only enemy. Here, you are in a literal race. Other survivors—ranging from a deranged custodian to a violent gangster—are moving through the prison simultaneously. You see their progress on the map, and they don’t just sit idly by. They will trigger traps in your path or jump you in specific rooms for a duel. This adds a layer of temporal pressure that is often missing from the genre. You can’t just slowly farm every corner of a floor if a rival is about to beat you to the next elevator. It forces tactical decisions: do you rush to the end to secure the pod, or do you take the time to hunt down a rival to eliminate the competition early?

Combat Dynamics & The Ghost in the Machine

The combat design is tight, responsive, and punishing on paper, and the systems back that up. The “Fight Your Last Corpse” feature works as a psychological hurdle. Fighting a boss is one thing, but fighting a version of yourself built over a half-hour run—complete with the specific weapon schematics and upgrades you chose—is a clever way to force players to reckon with their own build choices. If you built a “glass cannon” on your last run, you had better be ready to dodge perfectly when your ghost comes screaming at you with that same high-damage loadout.

Meta-Progression Friction

However, the design isn’t without its stumbles. The meta-progression looks like a slog in the mid-game. While the initial unlocks come fast and furious, the grind for permanent upgrades and weapon schematics eventually hits a wall. Runs through the same biomes repeat not because the challenge is enjoyable, but because one specific currency is needed to bump health by a small increment. Compared to the narrative richness and steady sense of discovery in Hades, [REDACTED] relies a bit too heavily on the mechanical grind. There’s also a lack of boss variety that starts to grate over time, making the later runs feel more like a chore than a descent into madness.

Visually, the game is a triumph of art direction over raw graphical fidelity. The comic-book aesthetic is striking, utilizing bold lines and a saturated color palette to make the gore pop in a way that feels stylized rather than revolting. As a 2D game of this scope, it should be light on hardware, and the UI is clean and punchy — though some of the text in the upgrade menus appears built for larger screens and could get cramped on smaller handhelds like the Steam Deck.

On Steam, the game offers the best of both worlds. The twin-stick movement is naturally suited to dual analogs, while the precision of a mouse and keyboard should make certain long-range builds significantly more viable. The short-run structure — a “pick up and play for 15 minutes” loop — seems perfectly at home on a portable device.

[REDACTED] is a solid example of a studio finding its voice by letting go of its expectations. It is loud, messy, and frequently fun. While it doesn’t have the narrative depth to unseat the kings of the genre, its innovative Rivals system and confident mechanical design make it an easy recommendation for anyone who already enjoys a crawl through a sci-fi hellscape — and an easy pass for those who don’t. Striking Distance has delivered a worthwhile take on the Callisto universe, even if it had to burn the old blueprints to do it.