RetroSpace

About RetroSpace

RetroSpace is a first-person immersive sim set in 2177 aboard Aurora 5, one of the city-sized stations of a fleet carrying a sleeping humanity in search of a new home. The station has been pulled into a sentient black hole, time on board keeps slipping between two periods, and the corridors are full of mutated creatures. You are not a soldier but one of the janitors who look after the sleepers, and you go looking for answers and a way out. It was made by The Wild Gentlemen and published by Kwalee, and came out on 1 October 2026 on PC, PS5 and Xbox.

The game follows the pattern of System Shock 2 and Prey: a large, interconnected station you open up a piece at a time, with shortcuts back to a mostly quiet central hub. There are no quest markers. Each obstacle has more than one answer: you can sneak past, hack security to turn turrets and alarms on your enemies, create diversions, lure creatures into hazards, find a hidden route, or fight with guns and improvised weapons. Mutamods add mutations for combat, stealth and movement, and the store warns that each may come with side effects.

Death is part of the loop. The station clones you after each death, and you go back to recover your gear from your previous body, while repeated cloning has its own consequences. The screenshots show dim red and green corridors, bodies and blood on the floor, specimen tanks and tall insect-headed mutants with glowing eyes stepping out of the dark.

It is not a grim game all the way through. The style is 70s disco and retro-futurism, the writing leans on dark and adult humor, and players compare its tone to a comic take on BioShock. Fans of immersive sims who want a station to pick apart, with creatures that can still make them jump in a dark corridor, are who it suits best; anyone after unbroken dread will find more of it in SOMA or Alien: Isolation.

How to play RetroSpace

1. Start a new game and wake as a janitor on Aurora 5, with only basic gear.
2. Explore the station on foot; there are no quest markers, so read terminals, notes and audio logs to find where to go.
3. Watch how each kind of creature behaves before you engage it, and decide whether to sneak by, distract it, lure it into a hazard or fight.
4. Hack security systems so cameras, turrets and alarms work for you instead of against you.
5. Install Mutamods to improve stealth, combat or movement, keeping their side effects in mind.
6. When you die, come back as a clone and return to your previous body to recover what you were carrying.

Tips

• Use the central hub as a safe place to regroup when an area gets too dangerous.
• Look for vents and alternate paths before forcing a fight; most rooms have more than one way in.
• Players warn that falls from ladders do heavy damage, so climb down carefully.
• Turned security can deal with groups of mutants you would struggle to fight alone.
• Recover your gear from your last body soon after you respawn.

Questions