Your first hours: a starting checklist
- Read the in-game tutorials when they appear — they introduce both the earthly weapons and the Genesis Configuration's abilities.
- Practice the box's soul-consumption finisher on the first groups of cultists; it is your sustain and your power source at the same time.
- Before committing to a fight, look at what the enemy is wearing. Armored plating soaks swings that exposed flesh does not.
- Expect the stealth-kill tutorial, but do not build your whole plan around stealth — launch reviews describe it as a minor system.
- Learn which enemies to run from. Part of surviving the Labyrinth is recognizing the fights that are not worth taking.
Feed the box, and the box feeds you
Treat the Genesis Configuration as a resource engine rather than a spell button. Its powers consume suffering, and suffering comes from finishing weakened enemies with the box itself — chains, according to GamingTrend's review, that tear the skull or chest open and consume the soul.
The practical habit this creates: when an enemy drops to near death, pause before shooting or stabbing them down. Walking up and using the box instead returns health and tops up the resource your abilities need. A fast kill spends a body; a box finisher invests it.
Aim for exposed flesh, not armor
Many of the cult's fighters are armored, and melee swings against plating are wasted. GamingTrend's review frames it simply: "A swing at a metal gimp mask is a wasted swing; a swing at an unprotected arm is a different story." Watch where a foe is uncovered — arms, legs, gaps at the joints — and work those targets with weapons before going for the box.
The enemy design rewards this observation. Some figures in the Labyrinth are dangerous enough that the review recommends avoiding them entirely rather than fighting; learning which is which is described as part of the game's survival education.
Healing and raising your maximum health
Health comes back through the box's soul-consumption finisher, so your healing loop and your power loop are the same loop. If you are low on health and out of suffering, the review's advice implies a clear order of operations: weaken something, take it with the box, then decide whether to press on or retreat.
Maximum health is improved out in the world. The review describes jamming your hand into the mouth of strange creatures to raise your overall health — keep an eye out for those interactions as you explore, since a larger health pool makes the suffering economy more forgiving.
Pick your fights
The official description promises hell's wretches, deviants, cultists and infernal priests, and the launch review adds a tactical layer: enemy variety is about threat recognition. Some enemies are armor puzzles to peel open; others, like The Chatterer, are best avoided altogether.
A workable rule for early progress: fight groups you can finish with the box (you need the suffering), disengage from anything that out-damages your healing loop, and use the environment to break line of sight when a fight turns bad.
Stealth is a tool, not the plan
There is a stealth-kill system, but GamingTrend notes that outside the tutorial you will find few chances to use it, calling the system underused. Learn it when the game teaches it, and treat later opportunities as bonuses rather than expecting the whole game to open up to stealth routes.
What to know about the launch state
The launch build has a known rough edge: GamingTrend's reviewer on PC (an RTX 5090 / Intel 285K system) hit frequent crashes to desktop that, in their words, "plagued" the final two hours of the game. That is one reviewer's experience on one system, but it is a sensible reason to save regularly rather than pushing long stretches between saves.
On Steam the game is a Windows-only single-player release with Steam Achievements, Steam Cloud and full controller support including DualSense. The minimum specification asks for a GTX 1660 or RX Vega 64, 8 GB of RAM, a four-core-era CPU and 80 GB of storage with an SSD recommended.
Open the official Steam page