HOPE 01 Review

Waking Up in the Hab Cluster

HOPE 01 opens with its unnamed protagonist waking inside a decaying underground facility, sent in on a vague request to find something called HAB 01. From there, the solo developer working under the name Bending Boy Games builds an unusually confident fusion: a 2D side-scrolling extraction shooter crossed with a metroidvania, where players loot, fight, and gradually map an interconnected facility rather than dropping into a fresh procedural arena each run. It's a hybrid genre pairing without many direct precedents, and reviewers have repeatedly reached for comparisons — Tarkov-style extraction tension, Signalis-style atmosphere, Resident Evil-style inventory management — without any single comparison quite landing on its own.

Loot, Extract, Fabricate, Repeat

The structural loop is straightforward on paper: explore the hab cluster, gather weapons, armor, and gadgets, then either make it back to an extraction point or lose everything on death. What elevates it above a simple loot-and-leave cycle is the fabrication system — scanned items get permanently unlocked for printing back at the player's hideout, meaning a single successful extraction with a rare weapon converts that risk into a repeatable resource rather than a one-off prize. With over 70 weapons on offer, each carrying its own rate of fire, muzzle velocity, reload time, and penetration stats, there's a real breadth of loadout experimentation on offer, and reviewers have consistently praised how much content is packed into what's still technically a day-one Early Access release — several explicitly said the game could be priced twice as high and still feel fair.

The metroidvania half of the design comes through in how the facility itself unlocks over time: rather than a single starting extraction point, players gradually open up additional insertion and extraction routes across one large interconnected map, changing how a run can be planned as familiarity with the layout grows. That's a smart way to make repeated trips into the same space feel less repetitive than a straightforward extraction shooter usually allows, since a returning player isn't just replaying the same corridor but choosing between increasingly varied routes through it.

A Rough Map, Literally and Figuratively

The recurring criticism across negative reviews is consistent enough to take seriously: there's no in-game map, several areas are lit poorly enough that switching on a flashlight barely helps, and the flashlight itself competes with melee for the same button rather than getting a dedicated one. One reviewer bluntly called navigating the cave sections nearly unplayable without functionally memorizing the entire facility by rote, and a separate complaint singled out instant-death traps stacked on top of an already unforgiving death penalty as feeling punishing rather than tense. Controller support drew specific complaints too, with one reviewer describing simple rebinds needing twenty-plus button presses to configure compared to a couple of clicks in other games. None of these are dealbreakers on their own, but together they paint a clear picture of an interface layer that hasn't caught up to the strength of the core loop yet — a fair state of affairs for an Early Access release, but a real one all the same.

Grinding drew a smaller but pointed set of complaints as well: at least one reviewer described spending six hours gathering materials and coming away with under half of what a single equipment upgrade required, with the developer reportedly uninterested in adding adjustable drop rates. That's a legitimate tension for a game this focused on loot-driven progression — a system built around risk-and-reward extraction runs works best when the reward side feels proportionate to the risk, and grind complaints this specific suggest that balance isn't fully dialed in yet.

An Unusually Well-Documented Early Access Launch

Bending Boy Games ran a genuinely transparent lead-up to release: a demo playtest in April 2026, a public Steam Next Fest showing in June, a further demo update through July aimed specifically at controller and Steam Deck support, and a steady stream of same-day and next-day bug fixes once Early Access actually launched on September 15. Multiple reviewers specifically credited the developer with fast, direct responses to bug reports — one described reporting an issue and seeing a fix shipped roughly twelve hours later, without being funneled into a Discord server to do it. That kind of visible, rapid iteration is exactly what makes an Early Access purchase feel less like a gamble, and it's a meaningfully different experience from titles that vanish into radio silence after their initial launch week.

Priced Like a Bargain, Playing Like One Too

At $11.99, HOPE 01 sits well below what its content volume would suggest — thirty-five-plus hour playthroughs were already being reported by reviewers within days of Early Access launch, and more than one reviewer flatly said the asking price should be higher. Combined with full controller support, Steam Deck compatibility, and accessibility options like playable-without-timed-input and custom volume controls, it's a genre mashup that's clearly been built with care well beyond what a day-one Early Access price tag usually promises. The rough edges — no map, competing flashlight and melee bindings, an underlit environment, and a grind curve that isn't fully tuned — are the kind of issues an actively developed Early Access title is well-positioned to smooth out, provided the pace of updates seen at launch continues.

Verdict

HOPE 01 fuses extraction-shooter tension with metroidvania exploration in a way that feels genuinely fresh rather than like a simple genre mashup for its own sake, backed by a deep weapon roster, a satisfying fabrication loop, and a developer who's been visibly responsive since day one. Its interface — no map, an underpowered flashlight, awkward controller rebinding — and an occasionally punishing grind curve are real complaints, not nitpicks, and they're worth going in aware of. But for under twelve dollars, with dozens of hours of content already on offer at the very start of Early Access, it's an easy recommendation for anyone drawn to loot-driven survival games willing to tolerate a few sharp edges while the facility gets mapped out properly.