“A 6-player co-op horror game where you loot valuable relics from nuclear wastelands to satisfy the perfect AI, KUT-ANA. Survive deadly anomalies and evacuate before you’re recycled.” – Steam Description

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V.A.U.L.T. PROTOCOL is the latest co-op extraction horror game. Gather up to 6 of your friends including yourself and delve into the levels with a flashlight. Set in 2043, you play one of the many operators that act as test subjects for the artificial intelligence known as KUT-ANA who is watching your every move. Collecting items around the map sounds simple enough until you account for the entities and anomalies that create obstacles along the way. You might be asking anomalies what are those? Let me tell you.

Loot Loot Loot

If you’ve played any other extraction horror games, you’d be familiar with this loop. You are given a quota to fulfill and you have a time limit to complete it. If you don’t complete your quota in the time limit, it’s game over. You have three runs into a random map typically to make quota, but if you are over quota on the first day it just gets higher. Each item is worth a certain amount of money and there are even drops you can get from defeating enemies if you’d rather earn your cash through violence. No matter how you go about it, the name of the game is amassing wealth. The items you collect have to be brought back to your ship so you can suck them up in the vacuum.

This game has a plethora of quirky anomalies that keep you wanting to come back for more ranging from the Hound Protocol—”One speaks, the rest bark.” Out of you and your friends all are dogs and one is a normal operator. This obviously changes the gameplay a lot as canine players will just bark and be unable to communication effectively. The robo-dog players do have 4 item slots to hold items for you though as the humanoid player. Another anomaly you might encounter has you all sharing the same fate. This means if someone takes damage, everyone takes damage. While this seems like a no-brainer, “don’t get hit,” there was a little bit of panic when one of us picked up the Hot Potato item and everyone started ticking for damage but didn’t know why. Another anomaly we ran into was the Manhunt where someone is tasked with killing a specific player. This one can be a little funny but when we experienced it, it was mostly by accident. Most friendly fire we found happened when we were panic fighting in the ship because a creature got in. There are many more for you and your friends to discover, so I won’t tell you all of them here. Just wanted to give you a taste of the variety you can find.

Oh the Horror!

As for the entities, most of them might seem non-threatening, mostly pose as a nuisance whereas the others such as an Angler Fish will chase you down a dark hallway. You know how this ends. There are entities similar to loot bugs from Lethal Company. If you can spare the loot, just give the loot or risk your own fate. If you are more of a fighter instead of “flighter” when it comes to these types of games. There is a shop that allows you to purchase weapons and upgrades to increase you and your friends’ chance of survival.

• Graphics– If you’re accustomed to playing games like Lethal Company or REPO you’ll feel right at home with these darker graphics. Customizable characters minus a point for not including purple.
• Gameplay– It’s a fun silly friend slop game that is a battle to overcome the many anomalies and entities to meet the quota. You’ll even get the opportunity to slap your friends around and those that die first can alert the team with the horn.
• Sound– Sound of the game is fine there’s an almost white noise/static ambience as you travel through the levels. However, when you come across certain creatures the tone becomes more ominous and threatening pending situation. Only drawback is that you can’t control your friend’s volume level.
• Controls– Controls are simple using the basic W, A, S, D movement. E to interact, G to drop items, F for your flashlight. However, they can be a little clunky at times as I found myself getting frustrated with movement every now and then when trying to navigate the maps and even the ramp onto the ship and god forbid, you’re tiny and can’t see over the steering wheel.
• Story– There is no story.