The Pit: Infinity

Review

The planet Arburda IV has been ravaged by a plague for years on end. It is said that an ancient alien facility hidden deep inside the Arburda IV mountains might be the source of this mysterious epidemic. Many expeditions were sent to investigate, but nobody came back! This is all that they mentioned in the briefing before sending you away to Arburda IV. So far, so good. You made it to the mountain coordinates and set up your tent in the extremely cold environment.  Now rest well overnight, because tomorrow might well be your last day as you enter the place known as The Pit: Infinity!  Good luck, you’ll need it! 

The Pit: Infinity is a first-person shooter with roguelike elements, developed and self-published by Kerberos Productions on the 13^th of 2019 on the Steam platform.

After a short introduction, you’ll be prompted to choose between three classes of characters: Engineer, Marine or Scout. Each of them has 3 attributes and 15 skills. The Marine will have more strength (called Might) than the other two classes, but will be lacking in grey matter (well, the brain), which the engineer has in abundance. The Scout is fairly clever, with an average build, and is more skillful with weapons (called finesse).  Then you’ll choose between the five levels of difficulty, labelled from Easy to Seriously (which comes after Insane). I’d strongly recommend playing your first couple of games on the Normal difficulty.

The first level is more or less a self-learning tutorial where you come down the mountain and kill a couple of strange creatures before entering the Pit.  Then the chaos begins!

I believe the Pit has 20 floors to discover; at the time of writing this review, I only managed to reach the 11th floor before being taken by the Pit. What I like in this game (apart from it being a first-person shooter, which is one of my favourite genre of games) is the fact that it feels different with each class. Even if you are drawn to play a specific character, it still feels different each time you re-enter the pit.

Each floor is well-designed and will have a set of chambers to enter and several enemies will be moving randomly within the floor. In the first couple of floors, the enemies will be fairly easy to kill but at the time you reach the 5th floor, it’s going to be tricky.

Why? Well, first your character will be low on ammunition, and as you reach the next floor, ammunition seems harder to find. Not only that, but you’ll also have to take care of your character. You’ll need to find food (otherwise he/she will die of starvation), find medical supplies (medikits, antivenoms, antibiotics, etc) to heal him or herself, and find other items that can help to repair your weapons as they become less effective over time. The other thing to be conscious of is how many items each of the classes can carry.

As you move around the floor, as soon an enemy sees you (there may be several who see you at once), they’ll rush at you for the kill. Some of them will inflict great damage, and even illness. But as you kill them, he/she will receive experience points, which will be shown as a yellow gauge at the bottom of the screen. When the gauge is full, he/she will level up. There, you can add points to his/her attributes and skills, but bear in mind that the number of points given is different for each of the classes, which gives your gameplay an additional twist. The good news is your character will get their health back each time they level up. Thank God for that! Some of the enemies will drop items, too, which you can use to craft useful items.

Other ways to receive experience points include unlocking chambers, opening crates/fridges/lockers, repairing structures on the floors, repairing your weapons, as well as regenerating health. 

When I started playing the game, I was trying to open all the chambers on each floor, but I found that I was dying very quickly. On some occasions, I found the elevator to go down a level, but decided to explore instead, while I probably should have gone down. But on other occasions, I did go down without exploring the floor and was taken by the bloody pit again.

And there is another twist for you . . . you might find the elevator quickly, but they might be debris inside, preventing it from going down a level. You’ll be forced to search for either a hatch or a chamber while the floor is caved in, in order to reach the next floor.  Well, I guess it’s all about how you manage your ammunition and health in each of your gameplays. To be honest, it is a blast of a game!

Good graphics, and I really like the atmosphere.  In terms of modes of play, you can play single-player or co-op with up to three friends. The game offers splendid re-playability and runs very well. The other point that I personally like is the in-depth gamepedia which you can access during your gameplay.