Dead Reset combines aliens with Russian doll-type selection-driven gameplay
Blog Andrew Joseph 01 Aug , 2025 0
(Editor's Note: A minor spoiler for future resets.)
Cole Mason has a problem. He woke up in a room's wet wine cellar, surrounded by people he didn't know, in situations he could not remember. They were all very unpleasant and did require him to undergo high-risk surgery as soon as possible, which was performed by a Superman Securityman named Slade under the threat of a quick execution. I got some pre-selected choices, mostly trying to resist being forced to cooperate. Both early runs and refusal to try were compelling driving forces, so Cole would eventually play and help them with the surgery.
Of course, that's when things get weird. The patient was found with a very dramatic pulsating tumor in her abdomen, and after Cole understood the recoil of disgust, he began to cut. Pulling her skin backwards will reveal that she is certainly not a natural living tumor. However, before he tried to extract it, Cole was caught by one of his tentacles, and we had the option of how to deal with it: chop off the rubber on the rubber limb or try to calm down and relax on our own. It doesn't matter which choice you make, as both actions erupt similarly in the patient, revealing the alien form of his flesh and mouth and killing everyone in the room in a terrible way.
Then, things are really weird because Cole wakes up on the floor where he starts, not only is he not dead, but he is the only one who remembers their past few minutes of living together. With it comes a tense, quirky, clever horror sci-fi experience that does a great job of building limited settings and budget-influenced suspense, and while it's hard to sell on paper, a group of actors take Russian dolls seriously to meet aliens.
You might argue that horror games are more like interactive movies that peaked in quality until dawn until dawn, but in the age of dawn they continued to drip into the market, thanks almost entirely to developers’ super-quality games and the work done since Dawn and Dark Pictures Anthology and other tiny releases. While those virtual slashing chords are fun and provide artists with some flexibility in how they make their monsters or cruel campers on their hands cause some cruel deaths of some unfortunate campers, Dead Reset's commitment to real actors is so refreshing, in 2025 video games and in 2025 movies. Probably not. But, by far, Syfy TV shows Chic and boldness, that's the biggest score for me.
However, the selection of these games may be suspicious. At the moment, it is often difficult to know if the choice you make will change the outcome of the scene, or if it is a well-designed set of smoke and mirrors to create tension in the present moment at the expense of future repeatability. The Developer Dark Rift Horror Signal indicates that there are multiple endings, each one-to-one different from each other, and the one-hour demonstration in Chapter 1 is definitely not enough to determine if this is true.
However, Death Ring Man's gi head does a lot of work to help it matter every moment. With each rebirth, Cole (and I) gets a little clever based on our last series of attempts and failures, sometimes revealing only more new information to exploit next time. Cole can't delay the surgery because the creature explodes. Trying to steal Slade's gun and force you out of the room shows that there is a security measure that Cole will definitely regret triggering it if he tries to use it. Magson, an older leader of this inappropriate group, made modifications to the room, essentially locking everyone in the room. The patient's name is Amanda and another crew member in the room, Fearne, has some relationship with her. The tidbits add up to the facts of the laundry list to help Cole convince the crew that he is in a groundhog day situation and maybe they can help him navigate in a way that doesn’t involve everyone being murdered.
All of this seems very instructive as I can make different choices, but there is not much room for explanation for any smaller details that will be different, even happening in a different order. But all of this put us in the surgery itself, which is the first glimpse of how the road further branched into different outcomes. It's a bit of a spoiler, but to go into detail about how the sequence plays may help illustrate the way you choose and the irrelevant ways.
There are several ways you can guide Cole to extract the creature from the extract, especially choosing how to keep calm for long enough to disengage it from Amanda without killing them. You can use drugs to keep the patient and the creature low but stable vitality, and it can also block Amanda's heart, which will temporarily block the creature. Ultimately, I can't find (or believe) a way to save Amanda during this operation, but the method you choose to try will make you the same as fearne, or get some obvious compliments from Slade. It seems clear here that this is the beginning of a trust system that can have some consequences.
Things even get weirder after this, but I think it's better to avoid these spoilers as they are key to what happened and why, but the suspense is thick and high throughout the run. Today, real institutions with real stunts and props are a philosophy that is really missed, so it is ironic that video games are trying to bring back that feeling. The gameplay of all this, especially the necessity and weight of your limited input, remains questionable, and it is almost unaware of how your actions affect the story in front of you. But if you're willing to treat this like a movie, attending and performing in today's performances doesn't have much thought of finding a branching path for the next game, I think you'll have a lot of bloody fun when Dead Reset explodes in Steam in September.