Blind Descent strands your crew under the surface of Mars with an alien infection, and META Publishing announced on October 12 that it hits Early Access December 2, 2026. It’s coming to Steam, GOG and the Epic Games Store, and there’s no price yet. Up to four players can play together online, with crossplay across all three stores. The world and the quests are shared, and each player keeps their own inventory and mutations.
“Easy to join online co-op for up to four players,” the announcement says. Easy to join is a claim worth checking, and you can check it early. A co-op playtest opens on Wednesday, October 14, with sign-ups on the Blind Descent Steam page. The store page doesn’t mention dedicated servers, which is the first thing I’d want answered before a group commits to a long survival run.
The setup is a rescue mission gone wrong. Your ship crashes at a Martian excavation site. The caves below are full of life, some of it hostile and some of it already growing inside you. From there it’s explore, scavenge, build and fight, while you hunt through recordings, logs and radio calls for the missing crew and the science team you came to save. Crafting is modular rather than recipe-driven, so weapons, tools, shelter and medicine are built from parts and upgraded piece by piece. Injuries hit specific body parts and need treating on their own.
Mutation or machines, split four ways
Lean into symbiosis with the alien organisms and you unlock mutations like telekinesis and wall running, at some cost to your humanity. Stay pure and you get access to new technology instead. Because mutations are tracked per player, a crew of four doesn’t have to agree on this. On paper, one person can run the walls and scout ahead while another stays human and keeps the base’s tech running. If that holds up, everyone in the group gets a different job.
Pokuch is a young studio based in Turkey, and Blind Descent is its first game. META Publishing is the co-op label owned by Owlcat Games, the Pathfinder and Rogue Trader studio. Its list so far includes Biped, Spirit of the Island and Train Valley 2. The Steam page says the team “tentatively” expects to leave Early Access within a year, and that the price will probably go up at full release.
Check the requirements before anyone buys. It’s Windows 11 only, with 16 GB of RAM at minimum and 32 GB recommended, and it wants 40 GB of storage. That’s a lot of memory for one machine in the group to be short of.
So sign the group up for the October 14 playtest, see how the join actually works, and add it to the December poll if it holds.
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