Team Kill Media, the 4-man developer team for Code Violet has a great quote they placed near the end of the game:

This quote is a great warning of what you have in store for you when you play Code Violet. It’s too bad that they warned us too late.

Code Violet released on January 10th, 2026 and is supposedly a Dino Crisis spiritual successor. This means that it is a survival horror game with a focus on a female protagonist, Violet, and managing all the jankiness the PS1 game was lovingly known for. The real question I had while playing Code Violet, was whether or not it was done on purpose, or a rug was pulled under my feet.

Violet.

The story follows a world in near extinction and scientists are attempting to bioengineer their way back. We see a woman named Violet, violently taken and she confusingly wakes up and is immediately attacked by rampaging dinosaurs. As you traverse the bleak, yet bland, and repetitive locations, you encounter lore that slowly reveals what their true plot is. Code Violet doesn’t rely on normal storytelling, and instead opts for lore and player driven narrative, making story, nearly optional. 

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The story is overall, campy and odd, but not bad. Reading some of the lore was entertaining, however, most are difficult to read.

The storytelling that isn’t “optional” is delivered via voice acted cutscenes between Violet and several NPCs. Sadly, this further “enhances” that campy feeling as none are done well, but is passable and entertaining, as long as you’ve tempered your expectations. 

The typically progression of the story is, Violet enters a new zone, progress through a linear map, get to the end of the map, neatly labeled “Exit”. You’ll then be taken to a brief outdoor “transition” area with no map, until you get to the next zone and do it all again. There’ll be a cutscene sprinkled in there, with some narrative. However, everything about the delivery of the story, from voice acting, animation and down to their implementation of subtitles, screams unpolished. 

But, was it done on purpose? They’ll say yes, but I don’t know. 

Meh-chanics 

This is an ongoing theme with Code Violet, and a question I asked often as I played: “was it done on purpose?” 

For full disclosure, we received a code for Code Violet several days before the release of the game. My experience then will be different by the time you read this and play (or skip) the game. Luckily, they’ve patched many of the issues early adopters have encountered. However, before I outline those issues and what they’ve fixed, this is the general gameplay for Code Violet:

Code Violet is a third person survival horror game, adventuring through a bleak situation against dangerous dinosaurs. It’s meant to be reminiscent of Dino Crisis and Resident Evil, especially with its crafting and micro managing inventory spaces. The game also boasts its focus on not holding your hand as you figure out your way through the game’s mechanics and mission goals. 

While the game does have a tutorial menu, none of it is forced upon you, so it can be missed if you choose to not read it. This could add a layer of difficulty and immersion if you choose, however, much of the game’s mechanics is easy enough to figure out, as I did not find out about the Tutorial menu much later through my play. 

Our main character, Violet, is able to wield a flashlight, weapon, UV light, UV based camouflage, and grenades. All of these items, besides the initial Pistol and flashlight can be found through normal progression. Besides the initial Pistol UV light and smart suit, the rest can also be missed. 

Violet is also able to find materials to craft the tools she needs to survive through the very basic combine mechanic. However, this crafting mechanic felt extremely shallow, as if it’s been thrown into the game as an excuse to litter the world with materials to unnecessarily clutter your inventory, forcing unnecessary inventory management. It isn’t like Resident Evil where you can inspect an item and figure out entrance through puzzles by combining items revealing a key. While we’re able to expand inventory space, the overall implementation felt shallow. 

Killing dinos 

Speaking of shallow, Code Violet’s main enemies are dinosaurs. There are about 4 main types of enemies, besides bosses. There isn’t a bestiary and I won’t pretend that I’m familiar with dinosaur types, so I’m going to call them Raptors, Baby Raptors, Spitting Raptors, and Crocodiles. 

Raptors charge up at you if they see or hear you. You can easily deal with them without surprise, by shooting as soon as you enter a doorway and run back. They chomp at you, make a quick retreat, then run at you again. Pew them with ease.

Baby Raptors are a bit trickier. They come in small packs, but with lesser hp. Otherwise, they act exactly like regular raptors. Go kill some babies.

Spitting Raptors…spit. They have more health than the others and their spit can cause the poisoned debuff which can be cured by an antidote. They won’t immediately charge you like the other raptors, but if they know you’re there and they don’t have a line of sight, they’ll chase. Dodge the spit, because it’s gross, then kill.

Lastly, the Crocodiles. First of all, why crocodiles? Are they dinosaurs? I don’t know. They charge at you while you’re in water. Shoot them too. 

The enemies are very uninteresting and shallow. Not only are there a laughable number of enemies, they also do next to nothing different from each other. Nothing that resembles an AI. I had several baby raptors attempted to charge at me, but some garbage bags were in the way and they didn’t know how to walk around it, so they just stood there, as I put them out of their misery. This takes away from the horror and survival aspect of the game. Taking away any semblance of strategy when it comes to addressing its dangers. Lastly, the boss encounters are, sadly not much better, especially their animations and design. 

Tools of the Trade

In order to eliminate the threats in Code Violet, Violet has several tools and tricks up her skin tight sleeves. She can duck, go prone, and dodge infinitely. The odd thing about dodging, is that Violet is unable to dodge forwards but can strafe left and right faster than can she runs. Surely that was by design.

Violet also has several weapons she can pickup throughout the game, four of which she can put into a shortcut for ease of access. There are also several types of grenades which can also be placed on the shortcut. Lastly, for some odd reason, you aren’t able place health items into your shortcut.

Regarding the weapons, Violet has the ability to upgrade her weapons. This can be done by visiting Armorer rooms. These rooms have a console in the middle and two ammo cache that replenishes. I’m unsure if this was by design, but the ammo cache does make it less stressful. Furthermore, I haven’t found any real visible benefits to upgrading my weapons. Besides visibly seeing that I can carry more ammo, the enemies take the same amount of bullets to kill even when upgraded. There is a possibility that enemies got stronger as the game progressed, but it’s difficult to say.

There is a special and odd thing about the Armorer console. It is literally the ONLY place to see and use the amounts Mites, the game’s currency, you’ve collected. (Note: there is a trophy associated with hoarding a total of 27,000 Mites at once). Again, if this was by design, it’s an odd one. Mites are only of use for weapon upgrading, nothing else. 

The saving grace?

Teamkill Media boasts developing only for the PlayStation, enabling them to streamline development and take full advantage of the platform. 

Code Violet is marked as PS5 Pro Enhanced. Based on what’s stated in their website, the pro allows for 60FPS at 4K. I played this on the PS5 Pro and I did have decent performance with no real visible hiccups besides some pop-ins and weird collisions. Other notable features includes haptic feedback and slight usage of the adaptive trigger. The adaptive trigger is shallow and not worth mentioning, however the haptic feedback at least had different feedback based on the surface Violet runs on.

Developing for one platform also didn’t help them with fine tuning out all the bugs. They’ve since patched the game, addressing many issues players encountered.

If I had written the review prior to these patches, it would certainly be lower. I luckily got to experience the game both in its broken and patched state. While this is a great change, it unfortunately shows that streamlining for one platform still kept them from ironing out odd gameplay designs, as if they forgot to play the game they created.

Oh, but there’s COSTUMES!

There’s costumes and collectibles that can be viewed in any safe room. The safe room houses a dressing table, the global storage, and a phone for saving your progress. There’s also a neat shelf that shows the cameos, decorative eggs, and ducks you’ve collected. These do absolutely nothing, of course, nor do I know why it’s even a thing that’s being collected, but it’s there and it was quite interesting scouring the world to find it. On the shelf also allows you to listen to the game’s soundtrack, however you have no way in controlling what’s being played. Meh. 

But there’s pretty outfits! That’s good, right? There’s 18 of them in total. All of them more sensible than the last!

Quit While You’re Ahead

Teamkill Media’s 2nd game in 3 years made by 4 people, leaves much to be desired. It’s a near full priced game on a closed platform like the PlayStation 5. Code Violet is a game that boasts player urgency, discovery, and the appreciation of a strong and beautiful female lead. However, their game didn’t reflect their talk. My overall experience was not the greatest, most of the time I was bewildered by what I played. It’s not a game I can recommend at release, especially not for the asking price. It’s a campy, playable game. A game one can enjoy in a several sitting, when you have disposable time and money to spend. And perhaps a much lower price point. 

Code Violet was reviewed on a PlayStation 5 Pro. We’d like to thank TeamKill Media for providing a review code for purpose of this review. Code Violet released on 10 January 2026 for PlayStation 5.