Level Zero: Extraction

I wanted to like this one. The concept of merging extraction shooter tension with player-controlled alien horror is genuinely sharp, and on paper Level Zero: Extraction sits in a space nobody else has fully committed to. You drop into one of three maps - the Space Station, Caves of Turion, or the Research Facility - as either a mercenary squad grinding for loot and trader reputation, or as an alien predator hunting them through ventilation shafts and shadow corridors. The asymmetry is interesting: mercs juggle gun attachments, motion detectors, neurochips for passive perks, and the game's signature UV light mechanic, where your flashlight is as much a weapon against monsters as any rifle you carry. Flip to the alien side and you get EMP waves to cut power, scream abilities to disorient targets, face-hugging traps, and a mutation progression system that evolves your kit across a session. On a good night, with a communicating squad and a competent alien player doing the stalking, there are genuinely tense moments here. The problems start the moment you look at the fundamentals a shooter cannot afford to get wrong. Gunplay on the merc side has been described by multiple reviewers as unresponsive, and while the 1.0 launch in January 2025 brought animation reworks, movement improvements, and an overhauled progression system, the feedback on gun feel has never quite reached the standard extraction shooter players expect. Time-to-kill is hard to evaluate properly when frame delivery is inconsistent: performance issues on even capable hardware have been a persistent complaint, with FPS drops reported when triggering basic environmental interactions. That kind of hitching is a problem in any shooter; in a loot-loss game where a bad frame at the wrong moment ends your run, it borders on deal-breaking. Balance between the two factions has been a running conversation since Early Access launched in August 2024. The alien side is more forgiving in ways that bleed into frustrating for merc players who cannot rely on a coordinated squad - and finding one through matchmaking is far from guaranteed. The maps do give both sides angles to exploit, but the tunnel and shadow networks lean toward alien players, which compounds the tension asymmetry in ways that can make the merc experience feel punishing rather than thrilling. The devs have shipped balance passes and a Mercs-only mode that removes aliens entirely for a more forgiving loot run with slightly reduced loot tier, which at least gives solo or casual players an on-ramp. The alien mutation system and cocoon feature added at 1.0 show real design ambition on that side of the game. The bluntest issue right now is population. Steam community posts reference concurrent player counts sitting around 300 at peak, and finding full lobbies in anything but the most populated regions is genuinely difficult. A PvPvE extraction game at this player count is in a tough spot - the threat density that makes the asymmetric setup work thins out, and the trader reputation grind slows when you cannot fill a server. The visual presentation is legitimately strong for an indie release, atmospheric lighting and environmental detail do their job, and the horror atmosphere in a well-populated session can be properly unsettling. But atmosphere without players is a loading screen. If you have a squad of three who are committed to learning the systems together and can tolerate rough gunplay and performance variance, there are flashes of something special here. Solo or with strangers, right now, the math does not work in your favor. Fred, Scout Team