''Trepang2'' (stylized ''Trepang²'') is a

first-person shooter A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre, video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a First person (video games), first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through t ...

video game designed by Trepang Studios and published by

Team17 Team 17 Digital Limited (Team17) is a British video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher based in Wakefield, England. The venture was created in December 1990 through the merger of British publisher 17-Bit Software and Swedish dev ...

in June 2023.

Gameplay

The gameplay is similar to that of many mid-2000s first-person shooters. Players control an amnesiac test subject who wakes up in a Horizon black-site. The protagonist is handcuffed and must rely on stealth at first, but players eventually must fight their way through enemies, both human and paranormal. During combat, players can slow down the action using a

bullet time Bullet time (also known as frozen moment, dead time, flow motion or time slice) is a visual effect or visual impression of detaching the time and space of a camera (or viewer) from that of its visible subject. It is a depth enhanced simulation of ...

effect and can also turn invisible. Players are sometimes aided by allies.

Plot

Subject 106 is a prisoner of the Horizon corporation, a global business entity that wields a large number of private military contractors while secretly conducting dangerous and inhumane experiments. The game opens with him being rescued by a mysterious man later revealed to be "Subject 105". 105 leads 106 through the facility using glow sticks, killing a large number of guards in his wake. 106 is led to a security room where 105 has left a key for 106's handcuffs, where 106 shows experience with handling firearms. Fighting through the facility, 106 eventually escapes and is greeted by friendly mercenaries from an organization known as Task Force 27. 106 fights with the task force to clear out several black sites, Horizon facilities that fell to their own test subjects, to obtain significant evidence to destroy the company. As he does this, he encounters several drones that warn him that there is more going on than just corporate espionage. After the end of his final mission, 106 discovers that most of the real causes of Horizon's failings were due to previous cloned soldiers from Task Force 27 going rogue, eventually leading 106 to turn against Task Force 27 after they attempt to gas and cremate him. After having a close battle against his successor, Subject 107, 106 destroys Task Force 27's base through its thermonuclear warhead, dying in the process as the device needs to be activated manually. Should the player obtain all the drones throughout the game, 106's consciousness is transferred to an unknown facility and implanted into a clone of him, who is informed that his work is not over.

Development

Developer Trepang Studios is based in

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

. Development started in 2016 as a hobby project to learn the

Unreal Engine Unreal Engine (UE) is a 3D computer graphics game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter video game '' Unreal''. Initially developed for PC first-person shooters, it has since been used in a variety of ...

. The team grew from being a single person to four members after posting public demos. Stealth and bullet time were not originally part of the game's design. They were added later to balance the difficulty. Some of the enemy dialogue was also added to give players a fair chance to react to enemy tactics, such as flanking.

released it for Windows on June 21, 2023. Ports to the

Xbox Series X/S The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S are the fourth generation of consoles in the Xbox series, succeeding the previous generation's Xbox One. Released on November 10, 2020, the higher-end Xbox Series X and lower-end Xbox Series S are part o ...

and

PlayStation 5 The PlayStation 5 (PS5) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It was announced as the successor to the PlayStation 4 in April 2019, was launched on November 12, 2020, in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, North ...

were released on October 2, 2023.

Reception

''Trepang2'' received positive reviews on

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

. ''Video Gamer'' called it "an excellent ultra-violent shooter" and praised the combat, stealth, and story. ''

TechRadar ''TechRadar'' is an online technology publication owned by Future plc. It has editorial teams in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia that provide news and reviews of tech products and gadgets. It was launched in 2008 and expanded t ...

'' said it does not surpass ''

F.E.A.R. ''F.E.A.R.'' is a first-person shooter Horror game#Psychological horror, psychological horror video game series created by Craig Hubbard in 2005. Released on Microsoft Windows, Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, there are three main games i ...

'', which it was inspired by, but it "delivers stylish, bloody action".

References

External links