A healthy blend between Stalker and Escape From Tarkov, Active Matter encompasses the grit and fear that both games instil into you as a player, but pushes you to explore deeper with a more distorted and warped world that begs to be adventured into.
Active Matter challenges you and your friends to complete tasks and evacuate before its myriad monsters — or other players — overwhelm you all. Your equipment and inventory persist, and a successful exit is the only way you’ll be able to upgrade your gear and loadouts to be better positioned for your next run.
Friends are something you’re going to want to bring to Active Matter because its revival mechanics, as well as three man squads, are necessary to help survive its deadly, horror-filled world. Although it is possible to play solo, it is a big challenge — with some missions clearly being designed around co-operative play, such as the Escape From Dogorsk mission that pits you against a number of monsters as you try to extract with a case.
There are two different modes to play, one being a PVE/PVP raid scenario in which it mostly focuses on looting items, killing players and monsters while trying to extract safely as you complete missions. The other being the Nexus, a short, round-based PVP-only section which alludes to having factions. These factions don’t seem to do much in the early version of the game, as it stands, but could lead to some interesting content down the line.
The raid elements are highly influenced by the Stalker series and seem to feature a number of very similar anomalies, such as the gravity wells. There’s also a number of areas that allow you to ascend buildings and terrain that are inverted or floating in the air leading to some interesting situations where you can look up and see people looting the inside of torn down houses as it stands inverted in the air.
Active Matter‘s monsters are extremely dangerous with a range of creatures that all feature unique ways to tear you limb from limb and some that need to be taken on in specific ways such as the stonemen that follow you around and seem to only be defeated by explosions. Having these horrors patrol the various raids, as well as the other players can lead to some challenging fights where it’s not just the gun play you need to focus on but your surroundings as well.
One of the best parts of Active Matter is just how quick everything is. In a mere minute you can be dishing out your gear ready for the next raid and then load into the raid within sixty seconds with missions selected ready to start working your way through the level it’s really impressive compared to something like Escape From Tarkov where you are generally left waiting for minutes on end just to queue into a game.
If you are looking for something with a similar feel but completely single player check out our review of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of The Zone which has a very similar setting but a much more densely packed world and a more story driven approach than the multiplayer focused Active Matter.
Although Active Matter is in its infancy, the gunplay can be a bit janky at times with some having quite crazy recoil that seems to hike up and shoot bursts of fire all over the place. Most of the time it’s not too bad, but a lot of the automatic guns are your only hope against some of the more horde-like enemies such as the hounds or flower men. After one of these monsters begins to hunt you, it’s only a matter of time before you are swarmed and eaten.
The safe house that you spend most of your downtime in allows you to do a number of interesting things. You can use a refinery to break down enriched items and get money/upgrades from monster parts and items you’ve extracted with. You can also get blueprints to then manufacture equipment for free from your own printer which is really nice essentially eliminating the fear of losing certain gear as once it’s unlocked you can just print more and it costs nothing but time which is great.
The builds that are available for classes are very interesting as well with the option to make all sorts of focused classes based on characters and then individual skills that you unlock by refining monster parts to then add to your character and use.
Active Matter is still in its early days and has only been released on the Gaijin launcher, but does have a Steam page active with predictions for full release in 2026. You can currently find Active matter on Gaijin’s Active Matter website here.
