Executive Overview
For decades, the medium of video games has reliably catered to our grandest power fantasies. Players are routinely invited to step into the armored boots of genetically enhanced supersoldiers, wield godlike powers, save the universe as chosen ones, or master legendary blades in realms far removed from daily reality. The appeal of the interactive medium has historically relied on this escapism—leaving behind the mundane to embrace the extraordinary.
However, developer Behaviour Interactive—best known for asymmetric multiplayer hits like Dead by Daylight—is charting a wildly refreshing course. With their upcoming co-op title, Exterminauts, currently deep in development after roughly five years of production, the studio is swapping out pristine power armor for high-visibility orange worksuits.
Rather than chasing galactic glory or political salvation, players in Exterminauts are simply working a dangerous, messy 9-to-5 job for interstellar megacorporations. While you will still find yourself jetting off to vibrant, far-off alien planets and blasting nightmarish extraterrestrial beasties, the underlying ethos of the game remains stubbornly blue-collar: get in, execute the contract, fix the infrastructure, survive the local fauna, and punch out before you lose your life—or your squadmates.
During a hands-on preview session at Gamescom, the distinct personality of Exterminauts began to crystallize. It is a game that marries the chaotic, frantic energy of cooperative extraction shooters with the grounded, unglamorous reality of heavy industrial labor. The result is a surprisingly cohesive, deeply tactical, and wonderfully chaotic experience that manages to stand out in a crowded cooperative gaming landscape.
Detailed Chronology: A Three-Man Contract in the Field
To fully understand the rhythm of Exterminauts, one has to look at how a standard mission plays out from the moment boots hit the ground to the nail-biting extraction phase.
Deployment and the Blue-Collar Aesthetic
My recent Gamescom demo dropped a three-player squad onto a vivid, brightly lit alien world. After picking our pre-built archetypes—though the full release promises deep customization, including weapon mods and passive skill trees—we were immediately greeted by our invisible boss squawking through our comms, detailing the shift’s objectives.
The visual design immediately breaks from standard sci-fi tropes. Instead of dark, gritty corridors or sleek, metallic military starships, the environment was sun-drenched, colorful, and teeming with alien flora and fauna. Air jellyfish drifted lazily through the atmosphere, while bug-like creatures with massive, crushing pincers lurked beneath the surface. The world felt genuinely alien and unpredictable, with fauna that could burrow underground, fly on a whim, and strike when least expected.
Traversing the Terrain and Engineering Infrastructure
Traversal in Exterminauts is rarely as simple as walking from point A to point B. The world is built with dramatic verticality, featuring steep gorges, massive industrial structures, and towering cliffs. Much of the early game-loop involves assessing the terrain and answering a fundamental blue-collar question: "How do we get up there?"
Players utilize ziplines to zip between high-altitude platforms, or—in true reckless worker fashion—simply slide off smaller ledges, desperately timing a combat roll upon landing to mitigate fall damage.
Once you reach your destination, the work begins. Your tools aren’t just weapons; they are maintenance gear. Objectives require players to:
- Turn massive pressure valves
- Weld broken metal plates
- Clear thick, viscous alien goop off vital machinery
- Reboot dead electrical systems
During one particularly memorable sequence, I found myself engaged in a BioShock-style pipe-connecting minigame to restore power to a primary terminal. All the while, my squadmates and a deployable support turret held the line against hostile local wildlife trying to interrupt our workflow.
The Extraction Chaos
No shift is complete without clocking out, literally. Once all terminals were rebooted, welds fixed, and systems restored, our squad had to call in a dropship and hold out against a rising tide of alien hostility until it touched down.
This is where the inherent chaos of Exterminauts shines brightest. During the extraction wave, I decided to experiment with my heavy rocket launcher, channeling extra energy through my backpack to supercharge the payload. The resulting explosions were cacophonous, wiping out clusters of alien bugs with satisfying force.
Unfortunately, the blast radius was a bit too enthusiastic. In the heat of battle, my miscalculated shot eliminated a couple of my teammates. Because the game operates on a shared pool of lives, my friendly fire incident nearly doomed the entire contract, ending in a frantic scramble and a resounding "whoops." Thankfully, the dropship eventually arrived, whisking us back to base just in time.
Supporting Context & Metrics: Designing the Blue-Collar Extraterrestrial Experience
Building a cooperative game centered around mundane labor requires a delicate design philosophy. Behaviour Interactive didn’t stumble into this concept by accident; it has been the guiding North Star of the project since its inception half a decade ago.
Embracing the Industrial Mechanic
The game’s design pillars rely heavily on translating real-world blue-collar tasks into engaging gameplay loops. According to Creative Director Vincent Regimbald, the team studied typical work-site activities to inspire the game’s interactive nodes. Whether it is welding, rebooting offline electrical grids, or clearing mechanical clogs, every interaction point feels tactile.
Furthermore, the game offers clever shortcuts for players willing to take risks. For instance, if you are faced with a locked terminal, you can either hack it through traditional minigames or burn through your own backpack’s auxiliary power to fast-track the system online—provided you have the juice to spare. This risk-reward calculation keeps players constantly engaged.
Enemy Design: The Psychology of Contrast
Enemy design in Exterminauts intentionally subverts expectations. Behaviour Interactive wanted creatures that look intimidating on the outside but offer vulnerable, organic weaknesses when engaged up close.
A prime example is the "wrecking slug"—an enemy conceptualized similarly to a Kinder Surprise egg. From a distance, it rolls toward the player as a hard, menacing boulder. Every so now and then, it pops open to reveal a soft, gross, yolk-like weak spot in the center. Players must wait for the creature to expose its vulnerable core, shoot it, and brace themselves as it snaps shut to resume its rolling assault. This clever interplay between impenetrable armor and squishy vulnerability prevents combat from devolving into mindless bullet-sponge shooting.
Arsenal and Customization
Players are outfitted with an arsenal tailor-made for industrial clearance. Loadouts support various playstyles, ranging from close-range support characters equipped with machine guns and deployable turrets to heavy ordnance specialists wielding destructive rocket launchers.
A standout mechanic is the backpack overcharge system, which allows players to tap into their suit’s auxiliary power to supercharge heavy weapons temporarily. Additionally, future builds will feature specialized weapon modifications—such as an elemental ice mod capable of freezing enemies solid so they can be shattered into pieces.
Official Statements & Creative Vision
Speaking directly on the identity of the project, Creative Director Vincent Regimbald elaborated on the five-year journey of bringing Exterminauts to life and the deliberate choice to frame the player characters as everyday laborers rather than legendary heroes.
"We looked at a lot of the typical things that a blue-collar worker might do on a work site," Regimbald explained when discussing the job mechanics. "So we only saw a portion here, but there is welding, there are terminals that are shut down that need to be rebooted. There’s electrical systems that are offline that need to be rebooted. So it’s a lot of interaction points."
On the philosophy behind enemy encounters and subverting genre tropes, Regimbald noted:
"I think one of the things that we went for initially was just to try to look at shapes that were really interesting… It’s that nice contrast between something that looks incredibly tough and hard and threatening as it’s just coming at you, but then on the inside just kind of soft and mushy and really weak. So we always think about our enemies in that way to try to go against expectations a little bit and just try to surprise the audience."
This commitment to grounding fantastical scenarios in the gritty, unpredictable realities of a standard work shift gives Exterminauts a distinct voice in the cooperative multiplayer market.
Future Outlook: Punching In for the Long Haul
As Exterminauts continues its development cycle, the title holds immense promise for fans of cooperative PvE experiences. It successfully sidesteps the exhausting tropes of chosen-one narratives, opting instead for camaraderie, workplace hazards, accidental friendly fire, and the universal bonding experience of hating your corporate overlords while trying to finish a shift intact.
The chaotic nature of the gameplay—where environmental hazards, aggressive alien fauna, clumsy teammates, and unpredictable machinery collide—creates organic, memorable emergent moments that cannot be entirely scripted. Whether you are frantically turning synchronised valves while your squadmates cover your blind spots, sliding down massive alien cliffs with a prayer and a combat roll, or accidentally obliterating your best friend with an overcharged rocket launcher, Exterminauts manages to make the interstellar grind genuinely fun.
When the full game eventually launches, players will have access to deeper weapon customization, passive skill trees, and a wider array of contracts across uncharted solar systems. Until then, we are left to ponder the timeless wisdom of the working class: any job you can walk away from is a good one. For Exterminauts, as long as the dropship arrives on time, you just might look forward to clocking back in.
