Symmetry is a 'survival management' game about a crashed spaceship and an alien horror

The trouble with deep space exploration is that it's awfully easy for the people doing it to die. That, simplistically, is the situation in the retro-future sci-fi survival management sim Symmetry, which publisher IMGN Pro announced today will be released on February 20: Your research vessel has crash-landed on a desolate planet, and now you have to get as much of the crew as you can back home.

Crew members will have to maintain both their physical and their mental health as they take on tasks that may be far outside their conventional expertise. Moral choices will have to be made—the Steam page references "collectivism vs individualism"—and toughing it out isn't an option, because the clock is ticking. And it's not just the extreme weather on the planet that's out to kill your team: "Life-threatening supernatural activities" will become increasingly common as time passes.

"As a survival management game, Symmetry's storyline will propel you forward toward big payoffs depending upon the strategies employed across the survivors," Dariusz Leczycki of developer Sleepless Clinic said. "At first look, Symmetry is a basic, old school looking game, but don’t be fooled, it is complex, compelling, and most of all, fun, and possesses a story line that you don’t see coming."

Visually, Symmetry strikes me as a cross between The Long Dark and The Final Station, which is not a bad place to start, but what really hooks me is the promise of a "non-obvious sci-fi plot." Survivors of a crashed spaceship struggling against time to escape the clutches of an otherworldly terror sounds like something Andre Norton would've written in 1953, and that's the kind of game I want to know more about.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.