If you and your friends are tired of the usual island survival routine of chopping trees and lighting fires, Abiotic Factor is a standout that deserves your attention! It captures the retro science-fiction atmosphere of the original Half-Life: a top-secret underground research institution overwhelmed by an interdimensional crisis. You are neither special forces nor superpowered fighters, but ordinary researchers trapped in a facility ten thousand meters below ground—wearing lab coats, pushing shopping carts full of scavenged junk, setting up folding beds in offices, and cooking communal meals with microwaves and electric pots. The major “Cosmic Companions” update adds an otherworldly misty forest and companion pets, making it a great excuse to gather friends for an all-night escape!
Abiotic Factor update gameplay footage
Why Is Abiotic Factor So Compelling in Co-op?
- Absurd workplace humor grounded in everyday life: Who would expect the handiest weapons in a sci-fi apocalypse to be cobbled together from mops, staplers, and steel beams? While alien creatures send the squad scrambling, someone still has to push the little yellow cart and steal water dispensers, coffee machines, and office chairs along the way. Everyday office life colliding with hardcore survival produces endless hilarious moments!
- Cosmic Companions expands the otherworld: Portals deep inside the facility open into a new misty forest full of toxic miasma and ambushing anomalies. The update also introduces a companion-anomaly cultivation system: hatch alien pets at your base to patrol, guard entrances, collect dropped items, and even glow at night.
- Closely connected team roles: One player becomes the chef, researching nutritious meals for scientists; another acts as the electrician, chaining power strips from the first floor down to the third basement to power defensive turrets; a frontline fighter clears the way with a homemade thermal laser gun. The entire laboratory becomes an underground refuge you build together.
Why Set Up a Dedicated Server?
The laboratory contains a large amount of state: physical switches, power-grid wiring, cart locations, and the elaborate defenses everyone builds. If a player's computer hosts the session, switching it off disconnects all the researchers still on the night shift. A dedicated server running around the clock lets everyone log in and make progress whenever they like:
- Server AppID:
2857200(anonymous SteamCMD download) - Core communication ports:
UDP 7777: Main game data port (must be forwarded)UDP 27015: Steam query and broadcast port
- Complete setup guide: For Sandbox difficulty and parameter settings, see Abiotic Factor Dedicated Server Setup and SandboxSettings Tuning.
An Easier Way to Manage Your Squad's Server
We recommend our open-source LanGame Server Manager (LGSM) (GitHub: SZSLGJCOM/LanGame-Server-Manager). Its Abiotic Factor server template provides graphical controls for day and night length, invasion frequency, and death-drop rules, alongside automatic save snapshots and crash supervision, removing the hassle of typing commands!
Playing Across Networks and Joining the Server
- With a public IP: Forward ports 7777/27015 on your router. Friends can choose
Join Game -> Direct Connectfrom the main menu and enterpublic-IP:7777to join. - Without a public IP on rental or campus networks: Open the LINK feature in LanGame OS Orbit together, join a private encrypted LAN room, and enter the virtual network adapter IP. The encrypted P2P tunnel offers low latency and zero packet loss so you can begin your underground laboratory escape!