‘90s style sci-fi horror Derelikt launches Nov 13 on PS5

A mission built around distrust

Derelikt takes place aboard Von Neumann Outpost, a facility grafted onto an anomalous asteroid discovered in Saturn’s orbit. The work is difficult, home is a million miles away and the people stationed there are already stressed, while a mysterious drone pushes everyone closer to their breaking point. You arrive as an outside contractor to find out what happened to Excavation Team Delta, which went missing on the derelict surface.

The outpost has dark halls and failing systems, while the survivors you encounter are not telling the same story. The developers say that combining a sense of not being able to trust those around you with encounters with truly out-of-this-world horrors was paramount to the game’s design.

Combat, characters and survival

Von Neumann Outpost is stocked with traditional weapons, and progress can bring additional weapon prototypes and alien weapons into the player’s arsenal. There are also more than a dozen characters to interact with, each with their own secrets and agendas: some are useful, some dangerous, some doomed, and most combine all three qualities. The larger structure of play includes fast gunplay alongside resource management, exploration, dialogue and old-school puzzle solving.

PSOne aesthetics with modern design

The team’s stated aim was to make Derelikt look as though it had been found on a CD-R in the storage unit of a defunct late-90s developer and then ported to modern platforms. The approach keeps modern game design in place while preserving the core feeling and charm of PSOne-era sci-fi horror, with a faithful homage to fifth-generation graphics rather than crude or primitive presentation.

Technically, the game uses 100% hand-painted textures and vertex colour lighting. Affine texture warping was deliberately implemented and mitigated through dynamically subdividing geometry, while retro-style full-motion CGI cutscenes reinforce the period aesthetic. Players can also toggle effects on or off according to their preference.

Development has been underway in some form since late 2021, and the developers describe the process as turbulent and exciting. Ahead of the November 13 launch, Derelikt is available to pre-order with a 10% discount.