Wouldn’t you know it? Surrealist horror vaguely haunted by the concrete monoliths of Soviet sci-fi gets yet another entry. That just goes to show what one too many winters and bureaucratic encounters does to a creative. The co-op survival-horror Kletka, named after the Russian word for “cell” or “cage,” has been out in early access for about year now, but that ended today. Indeed, 1.0 is finally here, and along with new content, it launches with crossplay, console support, and a promise for future content.
Kletka, jointly developed by Callback and In404, is a terrifying, gritty, lo-fi experience that you can put yourself and up to five other friends through. It’s set in the Gigastructure, a nearly endless tower only traverseable via a living elevator. The idea that the gigastructure is some sort of building is laughable, however, as each floor you land on may as well be an entirely new world when the ding sounds and the elevator doors open. And as soon as they do, a timer slowly starts to tick down, marking the arrival of a run-ending entity once it goes off. Seek shelter in the elevator by then, or you’re toast. You’re tasked with traipsing through interpretations of The Back Rooms meme, twisted industrial corridors, liminal hellscapes, and desolate farmland to scrounge up enough resources so that the elevator doesn’t eat you. That’s your punishment, unfortunately, as this realm is described by the developers as a sort of prison, and the only course of action you have is to keep going down, and not get killed by one of the many monsters that prowl below. Fittingly, the new biome they’ve added with the 1.0 release is called Prison, and while there’s not a ton of details the developers have offered about it, their description doesn’t paint a pretty picture: “A dried-up bar of soap, rotten gruel, and cell dwellers hungry for flesh—this is your destiny in this godforsaken place.” Likewise, they say that “another major update is already in development” for the game, but they haven’t disclosed details otherwise.