We’ve been experimenting with GTFO this weekend. And by experimenting I mean dying over and over and over again. But hey, losing with your friends is better than losing by yourself, you always have someone to blame!

With approximately 4 hours of gameplay under my belt here’s what I can tell you. GTFO is a tough as nails, early access, co-op, survival shooter. It’s a game scaled with 4 players in mind and doesn’t appear to scale down if you have a group of less than 4. The objective of the first “Rundown” at least is to get cargo and bring it to extraction. Along the way, you’ll run into a menagerie of nightmare creatures that make equally horrifying noises.

The first experience I had with the game was a 2 person Co-Op run with Greg. We were able to clear the rooms with enemies effectively after some time learning how everything works. We ran into enemies called sleepers that wake up and attack if they detect you. We quickly found that the easiest way to deal with these was to sneak up with a melee weapon and bash them in the head.

The big problem we faced as a duo was the alarm door. We were tasked with finding a key for this door first in the various rooms of the first area. Once found, inserting it into the door triggers a blaring alarm that starts spawning enemies to attack. While the horde is attacking there are circles on the floor you need to run and stand in to turn off the alarm. More often than not these were in the middle of the enemies which makes it challenging to stay in one place for the 10 or so seconds required. We were able to get to this point every run but couldn’t get past this stage. Now, I’ll admit that I do not have the best aim. Perhaps if I was better at shooters we would have done better as a two-man team but I just don’t have the skill.

On Saturday we did a few runs as a three-man team. The extra gun helps a lot and these runs went a lot better. We discovered that the C-Foam launcher is a must-have because it reinforces closed doors which makes it harder for enemies to get through. This paired with the sentry turret and mine launcher lead us closer to opening the door. I found that while I’m not the best shot I can run around to the circles while my teammates kept the enemies off me. With a little practice, I think this is absolutely doable with 3 people.

On our final run that night we managed to get the door open. We all rushed through it assuming it would close behind us. It didn’t which lead to us getting mauled by the remaining alarm enemies and waking up the enemies in the next room. Good times.

We roped one more friend into getting the game so we could play with a group of 4. Again the extra tools and guns help a lot with the alarm doors. Getting past the room enemies is a little harder since 4 people have to manage to not be detected by enemies while they take them out. Multiple times when we played as a group of 4 we got past the first alarm door and made it to the second area. The main issue we were running into was ammo and the lack of ammo refills. This is a game where every shot counts and if you’re out of ammo there’s not much you can do.

I’m looking forward to playing this more with our 4 man group and seeing what else the game has to offer. There’s no character progression or unlocks but the gameplay and atmosphere keep each run engaging and intense  From the looks of it, there are multiple rundowns to complete and we’ve spent 4 hours in the first 2 areas of the first rundown. Something tells me we’re going to have a lot of game time here.