An innocent man lies dead on the floor. My crew stares at me with disbelief, as if I’ve lost my mind. Worst of all, I have just ruined my 'survivor' run. Everyone was yelling that the victim was an alien, and in a game about shapeshifting aliens, it is easy to assume he was indeed a shapeshifter who needed killing. That logic, however, probably won’t hold up in court.
But there is no need to dwell on trivial mistakes like summary execution. In Directive 8020, we can simply run this back. This time, I will look cool, collected, and very smart by not shooting the man everyone was calling an alien.
While I initially thought the most exciting aspect of Supermassive Games’ latest title would be its shift to sci-fi—a genre I enjoy thanks to Alien: Isolation and John Carpenter’s The Thing—it is actually its Turning Point system that truly sets it apart. This new mechanic allows you to rewind pivotal moments and erase your mistakes, a feature that shouldn’t work in a narrative horror game but somehow does.
Rewriting the Rules of Interactive Horror
It seems counter-intuitive given that so much of the tension in Supermassive Games’ interactive narratives has always come from the finality of decisions. You live and die by your choices, whether they be successes or failures. Directive 8020 takes a sledgehammer to that idea with the Turning Point system.
This works largely thanks to the game’s premise, location, and characters, which make using Turning Points a must for more than just achievement hunters. I had an insatiable need to know more about the story and what would happen to my crew if my decision-making was just slightly off kilter.
The story begins aboard the spaceship Cassiopeia with a group of scientists venturing to the exoplanet Tau Ceti f. Driven to the edge of our known universe by a dying Earth and decaying Mars, these scientists are tasked with paving the way for the next intergalactic colony. Naturally, this goes disastrously wrong thanks to said shapeshifting alien, which bought me a one-way ticket to prison.
The story’s gory twists and complex characters both warrant further exploration—or panicked undoing—using Turning Points.
Uncovering the Crew’s Dark Secrets
I completed three full runs, with the last one seeing me hop around to every eventuality in what I’m now calling my 'anything goes' run. In all that time, I came to appreciate the story and characters to the fullest by filling in gaps with extra notes scattered around the ship, many of which I didn’t find or fully understand in my first playthrough.
Particularly poignant was how Pari Simms, one of the sleep scientists, haunted the narrative through every run via video diaries hidden in the deepest corners of the Cassiopeia.
Other characters also stood out, with their stories improving significantly with each use of the Turning Points system:
- Pilot Brianna Young and Medical Officer Samantha Cooper became focal points of my investigation.
- At first, Cooper came across as a light-hearted yet professional medical officer who clearly cares about her crew.
- She kept putting herself in harm’s way or volunteering for certain death missions.
- It took until my second playthrough to discover what had happened at Jessop Station.
- A subsequent run revealed a reactor meltdown at Jessop Station triggered an inferno blaze that engulfed everyone.
- Cooper was the sole survivor, leaving her with severe trauma and survivor’s guilt.
That shred of information completely changed the way I saw her recklessness. It transformed a standard doctor archetype into a deeply flawed, traumatized individual.
From Survival Horror to Narrative Puzzle
Aside from gathering every shred of information because I’m just that nosey, the simpler reason to use the Turning Points system is because you want everyone to survive. Directive 8020 works hard to justify this gamer instinct with video recordings left to family members yearning for home cooking and inside jokes shared amongst the crew.
Every character feels and acts like a real person, and my affinity for them only grew with each new drop of information. However, I decided to first play Directive 8020 in survivor mode, which forbade ever undoing a decision.
Sitting with each horrible outcome supplied the dread and tension that I’m used to when trying to keep everyone alive in a Supermassive game. To no one’s surprise, I absolutely botched it—I’m talking game-ending levels of fucked it up.
After the bloody mess that was my first run, my next step was enabling Turning Points to ensure everyone survived, avoiding every poor decision, missed QTE, and painful death scene. That’s an experience you could get in any other narrative horror game by following a guide. But it’s really the in-between where Turning Points shines.
The Best of Both Worlds
All that was left was an 'anything goes' run where I sought to unlock every extra scene that was still left blank. From this point, Directive 8020 shifted from survival horror to a bloody and somewhat confusing puzzle.
It’s not uncommon to restart a game to get a specific valued outcome, but the best part about Turning Points is that you can experience everything the game has to offer without starting from scratch (although some outcomes warrant early redos).
I meticulously worked through each story thread for each episode, experiencing every scene in the first episode. I found that the most key decisions happened midway through the game, so I often found myself restarting from those critical junctions rather than the beginning.
This approach allows for a deeper understanding of the narrative layers. It makes for some of the best body horror I've seen in a game for quite some time, combining the visceral shock of the unknown with the intellectual satisfaction of piecing together a fractured timeline. By allowing players to peel back the layers of trauma and mystery, Supermassive Games has crafted a sci-fi horror experience that is as emotionally resonant as it is terrifying.
