Developer: T-Minus Zero Entertainment
Platform: PC (Reviewed)
Genre: Action, Adventure
Publisher: T-Minus Zero Entertainment
DREGS is a co-op survival horror game developed and published by T-Minus Zero Entertainment, available on Steam. Playable with anywhere from 1 to 8 players, the game throws you and your crew into dangerous environments where teamwork is just as important as staying alive. Whether you’re venturing in solo or with a full squad, DREGS focuses on scavenging, surviving, and making it out before everything goes horribly wrong.
This game is currently in Early Access, and for it being in Early Access, there’s actually quite a lot that the game has which works extremely well.
First off, this game plays similarly to Lethal Company or R.E.P.O., but with its own twist. You are required to venture to various destinations where you need to collect loot such as plushies, alien crystals, and other valuables to meet a quota. What’s interesting is that you can also collect biomass, which acts as a way for you to respawn (clone). The more biomass you collect, the more chances you have to respawn, and even your own dead body works well for this too.
Pretty much, you need to go out to these various space stations looking for loot whilst avoiding the monsters that come chasing after you or the shrooms and plants that spawn, causing great disruption. You’ll meet weird creatures that are all quite aggressive. Besides the normal monsters, even your dead bodies can turn into crawlers or clone themselves as you to throw off your friends.
Having met your quota or after exploring other maps, you can head back to the mothership, which acts as your upgrade shop, has a bar, and also lets you equip items. The upgrades are a little limited as of right now, but there’s still a good variety. I just wish some of them had descriptions explaining what they did, especially the teleporter devices.
The only thing that was a bit annoying was that the game didn’t really come with a tutorial. There was nothing to go off of, so you pretty much went in blind. What was even worse was that when we had collected a bunch of loot and reached a fair amount of the quota, returning to the mothership led to several deductions, which cost us a huge amount of credits. The deductions were also unclear and made no sense. At one point, we had collected almost 20,000 credits, only to be left with 434.
I also wasn’t a huge fan of the combat. The wrench combat isn’t that accurate, and I felt it only worked well against the dead clones rather than the actual monsters. For instance, I was trying to kill the scorpion with the wrench, but it ended up getting me killed multiple times instead.
For the game being in Early Access, it already feels like it has a really solid foundation. You’re able to immerse yourself in a satisfying gameplay loop where you can keep going out looting while encountering a decent variety of enemies. I also really like how each map tends to have a fuel cell collection objective and a drop-off point that you can work towards to unlock an even greater reward.
The game also takes quite a while to load the first time we played, and it would briefly load again when opening the settings or menu. However, this seemed more like a one-time occurrence rather than a recurring issue.
We are thankful to have been provided with several codes to test out the game with friends. One of the players, Vroggo, had the following to say: “My friend and I played Dregs together, and it turned out to be a pretty fun experience.
I like how Dregs makes super good use of the environment that challenged us during our exploration. There are various different worlds to choose from to meet the quota. Each world offers its own unique set of puzzles, layout, and traps to navigate through. There are tons of rooms closed behind colour-specific keycards, vents that connect different parts of the map, and enemies to be wary of.
The visuals of the game give off a very retro feel, similar to games like Lethal Company or Murky Divers. The world design for each map is very detailed and just so appealing to look at. For every room, there is always some clutter added to the walls or floor that makes the entirety of the theme for each world look put-together.
I found the revive mechanic of the game interesting. There is a clone count that is shared by all players, which is determined by the amount of biomatter accumulated. While salvaging items to meet the quota, previous players’ corpses or biomatter can be found around the map to add to your clone count. At some point in the game, collecting the corpses starts to feel tedious, even with the in-game item for collecting corpses.
The experience of playing together with my friend was smooth, but something to note was that the game did take an unusually long time to load. Also, it would have been nice if the game had some sort of tutorial or description for certain items in the game. It was a bit frustrating trying to figure out what the “CWR-Key” was for, despite it looking so cute and important in the spawn area.
Overall, I would rate the game a 7/10. I had a very positive impression of my first playthrough and look forward to where the game goes next”
Overall, DREGS is a fun co-op horror game with a solid gameplay loop and plenty of potential. While the combat and lack of tutorial could use some work, it’s already a great experience for an Early Access title. If you enjoy games like Lethal Company or R.E.P.O., DREGS is definitely worth checking out!
Overall: 7/10
This is S & S. We are world game explorers. We play games. We have played over 10,000+ games! We travel, we write reviews AND we play more games!!!!
