Do you think that you would be able to survive if your ship crashed on an unknown planet? After getting pulled through a wormhole? Me? Probably not. Captain Amelia? Definitely! Well, if any of this appealed to you – then I have a game for you! It’s a little title from Ishtar Games called Dead in Antares.
We at Gamer Social Club provided a preview to Dead in Antares back in August 2025. By yours truly! Dead in Antares is the third installment of the Dead In… series. The prior titles – Dead in Bermuda and Dead in Vinland – will definitely be something that I will be checking out.
We were able to get our hands on an early-access copy of Dead in Antares and let me briefly say – I was not disappointed! That being said, let’s dig into the world of Antares Prime!
Disclaimer: I will not be heavily digging into the story elements, beyond the initial dozen or so days. This is only for the fact that once your whole crew is accessible, the story…accelerates. I’ll leave it at that!
The World & The Story
The World
The entirety of Dean in Antares takes place on the planet that has been dubbed by the crew of the Ixion as Antares Prime. Antares Prime is as deadly as it is beautiful, given the myriad flora and fauna that can prove to be quite dangerous to our human survivors.
And it isn’t just non-sentient fauna – there are much more intelligent, and even deadlier, forces at play here. That is not to take away from how dangerous a mere expedition on the planet can be.
Somehow, the crew of the Ixion must make do with the resources of Antares Prime to survive and eventually return to Earth.
The Story
As I noted, Dead in Antares focuses on the survival of the Ixion’s crew, led by Captain Amelia. The Ixion’s crew has been tasked to search space for resources that can stave off the inevitable collapse of Earth – as the Earth is dying. Not long into the journey of the Ixion, the ship is drawn into a wormhole and launched to another location – 550 lightyears from Earth.
Slowly, yet surely, after the crash, the entirety of the Ixion’s crew is awakened from cryo-sleep. At the start of the game, we only have access to Amelia, the Captain, along with the ship’s engineer Liu and the ship’s medic, William. There are another seven crew members of the Ixion that we have yet to meet, including:
- Polina – The Ixion’s astrophysicist, who is not the most expressive with her emotions.
- Maria – A capable scout with her own goofy nature.
- Noemi – The ship’s xenobiologist, even quirkier than Maria, but who also is a staunch advocate of peace.
- So Young – A sniper and a capable warrior at the Ixion’s disposal.
- Gabriel – Literally a Jack of All Trades – but master of none, who also has his own sordid past.
- Dwayne – A mercenary with his own struggles and mood swings.
- Omar – Amelia’s Number Two and a skilled diplomat.
Once all of the crew has been awakened, hold on – it’s only going to get more convoluted as you manage the tensions and relations of the various crew members.
The Gameplay
Base & Crew Management
When I say that Dead in Antares’s key gameplay focuses around micromanagement of your crew and base, I mean it. When it comes to your crew, you’ll need to balance factors like Fatigue, Hunger, Sickness, Injury, Stress, along with various effects from the environment and story. Some will help. MOST will hinder.
You’ll also notice that those aforementioned items are just a SMALL fragment of what you need to monitor and be aware of when it comes to your crew. You’ll also need to account for the Physical Skills, Survival, Skills, Mental Skills, and Scientific Skills of each individual crew member. Someone like Noemi, for example, will excel at things like biology, but don’t you dare ask her to be very good with skills like Strength or Stealth.
I didn’t even get into the various facets of your base. You’ll need to account for each workstation at your disposal, with regards to manning these stations, powering these stations, and having resources to even utilize them. And yes – they degrade over time too. But you’ll need these stations to produce water, gather resources, treat crew members, and craft needed materials.
If micromanagement and attention to details is not your thing, this…will be a lot. For the micromanaging fiend, this will be addicting.
Exploration
Dead in Antares will require the Ixion’s crew to conduct near-daily expeditions to explore the local surroundings. To locate resources, and to also find the various segments of the Ixion that are scattered across the planet’s surface. To explore, you’ll need to use your radar to get a sense of what’s in your surroundings.
See those little icons on the map? Those are places of interest! There might be resources, there might be…other things. Use your imagination. But that being said, it’s not as simple as wandering out to these locations. Various aggressive wildlife will impede your progress to these locations.
Each expedition will have a chance of an encounter. Some will be higher, some will be lower. And the weather of Antares Prime plays a factor in this too. Each chance of combat will also allow for a chance to sneak by…or ambush…a possible enemy. That choice will be yours to make. Fights yield resources. But fights also create stress and injury to your teams.
Combat
Combat itself functions on a turn-based system with use of Action Points. During combat you can:
- Use your Class Skills (Ace, Vanguard, Sapperm Civilian, and Commando);
- Move from the Front Row to Back Row (certain Skills require certain placement);
- Stock your Action Points for your next Turn;
- Guard; or
- Power Surge, which is a shared meter amongst your party. Your Power Surge ability will be unique to each crew member and provide massive buffs and healing, or deal devastating damage on the field.
As an overall statement before we get into what I liked and what I didn’t like – the game, obviously, gets much harder the further along you get. And that is not even accounting for the various Difficulty Settings you establish at the beginning of the game.
I opted for Story Mode – solely for the fact that I wanted to be able to finish the game without…hurting my brain too much. But for the more adventurous, we have:
- Adventure Mode – The standard difficulty
- Survival Mode – Tougher and for veterans of the Dead In series
- Last Chance Mission Mode – For the brave
There’s also True Captain Mode. Think of this like Honor Mode in Baldur’s Gate 3 – you have one Save Point accessible and you’ll need to live with each decision. If someone dies – that will be on you!
The Good
Visual Design
Dead in Antares is pretty. No getting around that! And I do love that Ishtar Games makes a point to specify “Gorgeous hand-drawn 2D art, made by humans, for humans.” Support your creative friends and their industry.
The colors are vibrant and they subtly change with the various weather changes that you’ll also experience on Antares Prime. So it does provide that feeling that the world is living alongside us in the game.
Micromanagement Galore
I’ll be honest, I didn’t think that I would get hooked as hard as I did when it came to all of the tactical management stuff. Sure, I enjoyed the preview, but that was just a taste of the mayhem and menus to come.
The amount of decisions you needed to make on a near-constant basis was…great! Do we send this individual out on an expedition, despite their ongoing sickness and heavy injuries? Or do we hold them back and send someone more ill-equipped to manage the expedition.
If what I just discussed doesn’t pique your interest, then maybe Dead in Antares won’t jive with you. But if you find yourself foaming at the mouth with the idea of micromanaging a crew in space, then by all means!
So Many Plot-Twists!
Without too much, Dead in Antares provides so many plot-twists. Both with the world of Antares Prime, as well as the relationships amongst the crew members of the Ixion, as well as what is occurring on Earth.
I don’t dare venture further, lest I provide spoilers!
The Bad
Combat…Mechanics?
I’m not sure how to address this one. It’s not a massive flaw, but it did create some frustration. While you may always be aware of what your crew can do in combat, the mechanics of your enemies are…vague and not clear. It always felt, to me at least, that they had much more in terms of options when it came to the use of their Action Points.
Again, not a huge flaw, and maybe it was the point that you really didn’t know. But that being said – it didn’t make it easier.
Resource Scarcity
There were definitely a few moments where I found myself severely lacking in needed resources. Many resources had very clear ways to obtain them. Others…not so much. Again, maybe the point – but it definitely did cause me to kind of just say “Screw it, I’m not focusing on this” in some instances and just dealt with the consequences.
The Overall
To summarize my previous ramblings, I honestly loved what I was presented in Dead in Antares. It truly did feel as though each of the decisions that you made had some level of impact on the rest of your gameplay and didn’t just feel like going through the motions because we had to. Coupled with the gorgeous artwork, ambient soundtrack, and interesting story, Dead in Antares was a solid entry in my gaming logs and has definitely nudged me to check out the other properties from Ishtar Games.
Dead in Antares is available as of February 19th on Steam, currently for $16.99USD.
Gamer Social Club was provided an early access copy of this title for the purposes of this review. This review was played on PC (Steam).
One Response
This review does a great job of conveying why survival RPGs with deep micromanagement systems are so addictive when they’re done well. The crew dynamics you describe, especially managing individual stats like fatigue and stress alongside the base management layer, sound genuinely engrossing. The mention of the plot twists surrounding both the crew relationships and the wider Earth storyline has me very intrigued without giving anything away. The ‘gorgeous hand-drawn 2D art, made by humans’ note from Ishtar Games is a refreshing and important thing to higlight right now.