A love letter to sci-fi corridors (written in blood on the wall)

I want to call Derelikt a "love letter" to sci-fi corridors, but its probably more of an affectionate PDA diary entry, quickly scribbled as alien creatures breached the doors of the sleeping quarters. Or maybe a romantic memo written in blood on the windows of the biological testing facilities. An affectionate post-it note, stuck next to a gore spattered keypad that reads: "I love you, space corridors! Anyway the code is 2000 - the year I shit myself playing a demo for Alien Resurrection."

Derelikt is still in development, but it's open to playtesters this week. So I went clattering down its metal passageways in search of my childhood. I didn't find it - you never do. But I did go "ah, that's nice" quite a lot.

The aesthetic inspirations are Alien Resurrection for the most primal of PlayStations, yes, but the attention to detail goes far beyond your average boomer shooter's post-processing shaders. The textures warp as you turn your view. Vertices snap as they reach the edge of your display. The end of a corridor is often pitch black, a recreation of the PlayStation's infamously limited draw distance. It is sci-fi horror for polygon counting anoraks.

There is a touch of ye olde original Xbox too. The PDA diaries, usable computer terminals, and "we found a big weird stone" storyline is pure Doom 3 - the black sheep of Dooms (or is that Doom 64?). It stops short of forcing you to use your flashlight independent of your weapon, though. This will come as a relief to most Doom 3 survivors but perhaps a disappointment to those few who succumbed to Martian brain worms and enjoyed all the panicked torch swapping.

Anyway, none of this is what really got me excited while schlepping through Derelikt's clanking metal bowels. It's the variety of sci-fi corridor on show that most impresses me. You have circular shafts with suspended walkways. Radiation flooded maintenance drains. Laboratory hallways with big test tube aliens which I am sure will remain motionless and contained. Some passageways include the de rigeur flickering of a red light that travels the length of the steel corridor in a state of silent alarm. And look at these textures. It's just gorgeous.

As far as the storytelling is concerned, Derelikt is not taking itself too seriously either. You are a contractor docking at a strangely lumpy asteroid's research plant, orbiting Saturn. Everyone is going space mad. The dialogue is littered with jokes. Save points are simple steel boxes where you upload your brain for the research company's data storage purposes, and everyone on board just refers to this as "saving". It is reassuring that the scientists seem to realise they have been tragically cast in a 90s videogame.

At one point, you pick up an alien glyph tablet and hear an incoming call bleeping on a nearby computer. You pick up to see an important looking doctor, who tells you not to look at the alien artefact. So of course you open your pause menu and stare straight into the abyssal cosmorock of monstrous geometric perfection. It probably gives you superpowers, right? The doctor immediately calls back. "You looked at it, didn't you?"

It is clear, having recently gulped down bunny-hopping racer Vholume and literal throwback shooter Sprawl Zero, that I am trapped in a state of horrific nostalgia for FPS games of bygone generations. With Derelikt, the beautiful curse looks set to continue, and I am glad this game survived Embracer's attempt to nuke it from orbit. If anyone finds this article, please tell my partner and child that I tried to silence the voices in my head that sang about affine texture mapping. But... the vertex lighting... it was... too much... so... spectacular...