This game has come a long way since Rundown 0. The devs have been hard at work polishing this game up since day 1 and their effort and innovation has finally paid off, yet far from finished.
First played this game in the closed BETA and didn't buy the game till Rundown 4 dropped, and man I regret not buying it sooner.
But regardless of all that, this game is something new, it feels wrong to place this in just the horror genre as this game touches on so many from FPS, stealth, perma-death, the list goes on. While familiar, this game feels like a one of a kind. And I love how I can get immersed in this game from the moment I boot it up

Most of the time, you'll have someone guiding you through the base mechanics of the game and offloading all their little tips & tricks whenever you need them. But even if you don't have friends . You'll do fine as the games base mechanics are fairly self explanatory after a fail or more . After that point everything you pick up is to smooth out the easier levels and make the highest levels do-able with every move having a reason and purpose, I mean some of it not so much, part of that is just so you can give a hail-Mary and run through the whole level while smashing heads but still, a wrong move by you and your team, and the game will punish you. Speaking of...

As described, this is a hardcore game, one wrong move, and its prisoner flattening time. This is emphasised throughout the whole game as the stakes slowly stack up with bigger enemies and bigger losses, but for the new prisoner, god help you, as the easiest difficulty, is hard, not forgetting the higher difficulties extreme, Overload, prisoner efficiency . But what is so clever with the design of the higher difficulties is that it's not the lazy devs solution of raising health and damage of enemies but raising the stakes, additional objectives designed to batter you a bit more and rarely; dramatically changing the way enemies behave and spawn.

There's a massive community of players ready and waiting to hop into any level in the GTFO community discord, welcoming players fresh from the store page, all the way to the grizzled Rundown 1 veterans. So you'll never have a shortage of people to meet and play with. While I find using discord is the best way, as of rundown 4 a new matchmaking system has been added, so now the excuse "no one wants to play with me" is invalid. Learn the game, complete a few expeditions and get started with clearing this rundown cause it won't wait for you, as every few months or so, the devs chuck out the old and bring in the new with an entirely new rundown with new guns, equipment and levels for you to lose your mind and time over.

Because you should
Once you've successfully got rid of your fear of the dark, holes, blood, the list goes on. Buy it . If you were expecting something detailed here, you're wrong.

• Great with friends
  
• You'll probably want a decent mic
  
• Freakishly good graphics
  
• Almost perfect sound design
  
• Expeditions can take a LONG time
  
• New game mechanics are still being added

This is a breath of fresh air to the hardcore genre with its scarily good levels of mechanical design.
BUT It troubles me that this game is still in early access, while clearly buggy in a few places, it doesn't make sense to me as to why it's still in this early state after FOUR RUNDOWNS and a closed BETA .
But despite that, this game is in a great place and continues to grow bigger and better.

As much as the game is fantastic in theory and a joy to anyone who play and enjoys the minesweeper concept, this game has been poorly put it together.

The game feels as though it was made rather lazily in some aspects. Sound being the main one. As much as I shouldn't be criticising a game for it's sound I have to make an exception.
There are zero sound options apart from on and off, no sliders whatsoever. Let alone the sound design being terrible, you can hear an airy sort of sound as each "ding" comes to an end sort of like electrical interference, and the actual sounds in question when you clear tiles, why must the sound ascend and be a awfully obnoxious "ding", why not stick with the beautifully nostalgic yet discrete clicking of a 2000's trackball mouse.
Oh and the music, I've never muted a track sooner, as much as I would have liked to have turned it down to about 5% so there's at least some background noise, despite the one track being once again ascending chords.

And back to options, with an options menu you'd expect this kind of fully adjustable interface, however there are no changes to be made other than an odd 5, all of which are tick boxes, and be warned you cannot change bindings, the sub-menu for controls within options is simply a list of controls.

Honest summary: stick with online minesweeper, or just make it yourself, it'll be more fun to do so anyway.