Half-Life-inspired survival game Abiotic Factor cascaded into a 1.0 launch earlier this week, earning itself an ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ rating on Steam, and a whopping score of 92 in our Abiotic Factor review. Our intrepid brainiac Morgan Park called it “one of the greatest survival crafting games ever made, and by far my favourite,” praising its combination of rich survival systems with an enormous tech tree and a Black Mesa-style setting that continuously rewards exploration.
In short, Abiotic Factor is excellent. But it seems there’s still room for improvement within the GATE Research Facility. This isn’t my opinion either. It’s that of the game’s own art director, Connor Moran, who took to YouTube to praise a fan for improving upon their own work in a specific area of the game.
That fan goes by Hoider, who has a YouTube channel dedicated to creating elaborate reload animations. In the video’s description, Hoider says Abiotic Factor “has become one of my favourite games of all time” and has spent the last six months creating their own versions of Abiotic Factor’s conventional firearm animations (which you’ll find in the game alongside its weirder, craftable weapons).
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Hoider’s animations are designed to reflect Abiotic Factor’s in-built reloading skill—which makes reloading faster and more efficient as it improves—with multiple animations that track your character’s journey from conflict-averse boffin to hardened survivor.
For example, the initial pistol animation shows the player character struggling to insert the clip into the gun, while the later animation is much slicker and more competent. My favourite reloads are those for the revolver, where your scientist goes from clumsily shaking spent cartridges out of the cylinder, to swapping the gun into their opposite hand and dunking them out in a single, confident motion.
As someone who appreciates a good reload in any shooter, these animations are wonderfully intricate and Moran, who created the original weapon animations for the game, isn’t shy about sharing his own admiration. “These are incredible,” he writes in the video’s comments. “You absolutely nailed the vibe I was going for with each reload and just improved on it. Thanks for sharing!”
I’d love to see these animations turned into a proper mod, though I understand that it may not be as simple as swapping them out. In any case, given how frictional player and developer relationships can be at times, it’s great to see such a positive interaction between a designer and a fan.