10 Chambers Collective is a small 10 person team (it was eight when they debuted the game at The Game Awards 2017) working on a four-player, cooperative, story-driven survival game that appears to be a mix of The Thing and Aliens.

The name of the game is appropriately called GTFO.

The Swedish studio is being headed up by Ulf Andersson, an alum from Overkill Studios’ Payday 2.

But this isn’t just a mindless shooter. Adam Gascoine, the writer for GTFO, explained in the press release…

“The narrative of GTFO encourages exploration and discovery. The more you play a character, the more you learn about them – like how they ended up as scavengers trying to survive in this grisly and disturbing underworld called The Complex,”

The trailer is two minutes of both cinematics and in-game play. You can see what it looks like below.

The trailer is really put together quite well.

The setup is that this team is making their way into the complex. First and foremost I have to say that the lighting here is perfect… absolutely perfect.

The low-key light utilized to create this mysterious vibe about the complex is executed with technical mastery. Filling the backdrops with dithered fog effects really adds to the atmosphere as well, it gives it that 1980s style horror vibe that was present in so many low-budget flicks back in the day.

The first thing that came to mind was “this is how an Aliens game should be lit”.

There are a lot of sequences where we get a soft fall-off from the light leading down the corridors and storage rooms, making each corner, each tunnel, each passageway look more and more frightening as they either fill up with hordes or leave you wondering what will pop out from around the corner next.

In fact, that’s literally what happens in one of the scenes at the end where the player runs down an arched-girded tunnel only to turn around and come face to face with what looks like an Eldritch tentacle. Many gamers and sci-fi fans will quickly recognize that it looks like a facehugger from the Alien franchise.

According to Ulf Andersson, founder of 10 Chambers Collective, the atmosphere and setting play into the game’s unpredictable nature and horror-themed outcomes. It’s not all about putting on a show, it’s also about engaging players with thematic elements and bare-knuckle, co-op actionm with Ulf explaining…

“The unpredictability and replayability of GTFO is unrivaled in the co-op FPS genre – you and your teammates will never know your way or where the monsters are. You have to use all the tools at your disposal and really be on your toes to get whatever edge you can get”

I haven’t been too inclined to hop into co-op or any multiplayer-only games recently. I only play casually on the Switch these days, but I have to give credit where credit is due… to be a small team working on this game, the debut trailer looks super impressive.

You can learn more about GTFO, which is due for release on Steam in 2018, by visiting the official website.