{"id":85211,"date":"2026-09-15T22:20:01","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T14:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=85211"},"modified":"2026-09-15T22:20:01","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T14:20:01","slug":"exterminauts-wants-you-to-live-a-9-to-5-life-that-bites-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=85211","title":{"rendered":"Exterminauts Wants You to Live a 9-to-5 Life that Bites Back"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\"><em><strong>Key Preview Takeaways:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul class=\"list jsx-4224303756\" data-cy=\"list\">\n<li><em>It\u2019s a three-player PvE shooter with a novel premise: you\u2019re an everyman in a sci-fi world.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Jobs that required cooperation were among my favorites during my hands-on session.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Chaos and tension are baked into the gameplay, which added to my enjoyment of it.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Video games generally want you to feel special. We play chosen ones, genetically enhanced soldiers in power armor, superheroes, major and minor deities, legendary swordsmen. We live out lives that are very unlike our own. That\u2019s the fantasy. With Exterminauts, developer Behaviour Interactive wants you to be a working man. Don\u2019t get me wrong, you\u2019ll still be visiting faraway planets and battling some really wild alien beasties. But ultimately, you\u2019re working a 9-to-5. You\u2019re not hunting for glory here. Your job is to get in, do what needs done, and get out. And based on what I played at Gamescom, this could be a job I could grow to love.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">That working man mentality undergirds most of what Exterminauts is about. You\u2019re not wearing armor; you\u2019re clad in an orange worksuit you might see at a job site. You\u2019re not going to be able to run off and do everything alone. You\u2019ve gotta stick with your teammates if you want to get the job done, and you\u2019ve got a boss in your ear telling you what you\u2019ll need to take care of next. Oh, and while you may be on a far-off planet full of strange and wondrous flora and fauna, you\u2019re still working for The Man, which is to say, interstellar megacorporations. The more things change, right? Exterminauts has been in development for about five years now, but when I asked members of the team about the game\u2019s identity, they told me that blue collar identity was always part of what they wanted to make.<\/p>\n<p><output class=\"box-wrapper jsx-2673806401\" data-cy=\"article-video\"\/><\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">My demo consisted of a single three-man contract. After we\u2019d chosen our pre-built characters (you\u2019ll have access to customization in the full game, including weapon mods and passive abilities), it was time to get to work. Exterminauts has a low-key vibe to it. Yeah, you\u2019re fighting some absolutely otherworldly monsters (I really liked what looked like air jellyfish, and another bug-like creature) with giant pincers, but everything is very bright, vivid, and colorful. This looks like an alien world full of alien creatures that can fly when you least expect it, burrow underground, and genuinely feel, well, alien \u2013 something that\u2019s often hard for games to pull off.<\/p>\n<div class=\"display-title jsx-684634384 jsx-2659527929 quote-container\" data-cy=\"quoteBox\">You also have to do your job. That means traipsing up (or ziplining between) massive structures and doing things like turning valves, fixing electrical shorts, welding metal, or whatever else.<span class=\"stack jsx-2959124702 jsx-326843967\"><span>\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">When I asked about it, Creative Director Vincent Regimbald told me nailing that was a lot of work. \u201cI think one of the things that we went for initially was just to try to look at shapes that were really interesting. One of the enemies that you did not see is the wrecking slug. We thought of a Kinder surprise or an egg of sorts. Basically it just rolls around like a big boulder and every now and then it just opens up and there&#8217;s almost like a yoke inside. It&#8217;s really gross and that&#8217;s the weak spot that you shoot at and then it closes back up and starts rolling again. So it&#8217;s that nice contrast between something that looks incredibly tough and hard and threatening as it&#8217;s just coming at you, but then on the inside just kind of soft and mushy and really weak. So we always think about our enemies in that way to try to go against expectations a little bit and just try to surprise the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><output class=\"box-wrapper jsx-2673806401\" data-cy=\"article-video\"\/><\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Thankfully, we were more than equipped for the job. My character occupied more of a support role in my play session. My machine gun was great for smaller fauna, but I also had a deployable turret. My favorite, though, was my rocket launcher, which exploded with cacophonous booms and wiped out anything unlucky enough to be near the blast radius. Extrerminauts also does a neat thing where you can use your backpack to overcharge your heavy weapons, making them even stronger. When something absolutely, positively has to die, accept no substitutes.<\/p>\n<p><span data-cy=\"poll-view-trigger\"><\/p>\n<section class=\"box-wrapper jsx-2673806401\"\/><\/span><\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">But despite its name, Exterminauts isn\u2019t just about blasting away at whatever we found planetside. You also have to do your job. That means traipsing up (or ziplining between) massive structures and doing things like turning valves, fixing electrical shorts, welding metal, or whatever else. One of my favorite sections had me playing what was essentially the pipe connecting minigame from Bioshock while my turret (and my squadmates) held off some local wildlife that really didn\u2019t want us around. <\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">But some problems will require multiple Exterminauts to fix, so you\u2019ll have to coordinate, which was one of my favorite things about my time with it. Even something as simple as turning a pair of valves at the same time can be challenging when you only have one person left to defend the rest of the team. I also dug that you could fasttrack some of these fixes if you were willing to give something up. Sure, I could play the minigame to get that terminal back online, but I could also just juice it with my backpack if I had the power to spare. <\/p>\n<p><output class=\"box-wrapper jsx-2673806401\" data-cy=\"article-slideshow\"><button type=\"button\" style=\"display:none\" class=\"jsx-2228525885\"\/><span data-cy=\"slideshow-view-trigger\"><\/p>\n<div data-cy=\"slideshow-preview\" class=\"jsx-1711207865 slideshow-preview\">\n<h3 class=\"title5 jsx-62124236 jsx-1085005187\" data-cy=\"slideshow-preview-title\">Exterminauts Screenshots<\/h3>\n<div data-cy=\"slideshow-images-container\" class=\"jsx-1711207865 images-container\"><button type=\"button\" data-cy=\"hero-image\" aria-label=\"Open Slideshow\" class=\"jsx-1711207865 hero-image\"><img alt=\"\" aria-hidden=\"true\" decoding=\"async\" role=\"presentation\" class=\"progressive-image jsx-2896921488 image aspect-ratio aspect-ratio-16-9 jsx-2605834259 jsx-2338608387 hover-opacity\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7\" data-cy=\"progressive-image\"\/><span class=\"button-text jsx-729543028 button button--primary jsx-3027214138 jsx-4266531355 row-pagination-button next contained centered round large\" data-cy=\"paginate next\" title=\"Open Slideshow\"><span class=\"ign-icon right-chevron jsx-2750866048 jsx-2919720488\" role=\"presentation\" aria-hidden=\"true\" data-cy=\"right-chevron\" style=\"mask:url(https:\/\/kraken.ignimgs.com\/_next\/static\/media\/RightChevron.272be43c.svg?cors=1) no-repeat center center \/ contain;background:currentColor\"\/><\/span><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/output><\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">\u201cWe looked at a lot of the typical things that a blue-collar worker might do on a work site,\u201d Regimbald told me when I asked about how they approached designing the jobs players would need to do. \u201cSo we only saw a portion here, but there is welding, there are terminals that are shut down that need to be rebooted. There&#8217;s electrical systems that are offline that need to be rebooted. So it&#8217;s a lot of interaction points.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"display-title jsx-684634384 jsx-2659527929 quote-container\" data-cy=\"quoteBox\">Whether you\u2019re blowing your friends up by accident or getting knocked off of a tall structure you\u2019re trying to fix or just reacting to stuff going wrong on the fly, you\u2019re always making decisions and dealing with something beyond your control.<span class=\"stack jsx-2959124702 jsx-326843967\"><span>\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">I also liked how Exterminauts makes you traverse its world. Things aren\u2019t flat; the buildings you\u2019ll climb and the environments you\u2019ll navigate are replete with gorges and cliffs you\u2019ll need ziplines to navigate. Or you could, like me, just slide off the smaller ones and hope you could time a roll as you were about to land to mitigate the fall damage. Half the time, the first part of any job was asking, \u201cOkay, how do we get up there?\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Once we\u2019d finished rebooting all the terminals, fixing welds, dropping in new pipe, and clearing off weird goop that had accumulated on the machines we needed to maintain, it was time to go home. No job is done until you clock out, after all \u2013 and you do literally clock in and out in Exterminauts. Once we called in a dropship to take us home, it was time to hold out until it arrived. My turret put in work, but at this point I figured I\u2019d juice up my rocket launcher and play around with it a bit. It worked great, but I also accidentally killed a couple of my teammates \u2013 and if you run out of lives, it\u2019s contract failed. Whoops. <\/p>\n<p><output class=\"box-wrapper jsx-2673806401\"><\/p>\n<figure class=\"jsx-313219616\"><span><img alt=\"\" aria-hidden=\"true\" decoding=\"async\" role=\"presentation\" class=\"progressive-image article-image article-image-full-size jsx-1809694635 jsx-2338608387\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7\" data-cy=\"progressive-image\"\/><\/span><\/figure>\n<p><\/output><\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">And that\u2019s the other thing about Exterminauts, and something that you might not get from watching a trailer: it\u2019s chaotic. Whether you\u2019re blowing your friends up by accident or getting knocked off of a tall structure you\u2019re trying to fix or just reacting to stuff going wrong on the fly, you\u2019re always making decisions and dealing with something beyond your control, and according to the developers, that\u2019s intentional. I felt it during my demo, and it\u2019s one of the aspects of Exterminauts I enjoyed most.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Eventually, our dropship arrived and we made it off-planet and back to base. That was it. Demo over. I was sorry to see us clock out, but I am excited to see what kind of work I can pick up as an Exterminaut in the future. Oh, and those mods sound neat, too, especially the ice one that lets you freeze and shatter enemies. Until then, I\u2019ll be workin\u2019 9-to-5, trying to make a living. Just like an Exterminaut, but without the aliens and scary falls. But you know what they say: any job you can walk away from is a good one, right?<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">While you&#8217;re here, check out these recent previews of other big upcoming games we&#8217;ve checked out recently!<\/p>\n<p><output class=\"box-wrapper jsx-2673806401\" data-cy=\"author-sign-off\"><\/p>\n<section class=\"author-sign-off\" data-cy=\"author-sign-off\"><span class=\"stack jsx-59817748 jsx-1927875859\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"rounded jsx-444076027 jsx-4218469134 profile-thumb jsx-2141281959 aspect-ratio aspect-ratio-1-1\"><img alt=\"Will Borger Avatar\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"progressive-image profile-thumb-img jsx-249361588 jsx-2338608387 expand\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/assets-prd.ignimgs.com\/avatars\/616632499deced08e4aad294\/547614_10151496009740512_752071170_n-1634144531385.jpg?crop=1%3A1&amp;width=56&amp;format=jpg&amp;auto=webp&amp;quality=80 1x, https:\/\/assets-prd.ignimgs.com\/avatars\/616632499deced08e4aad294\/547614_10151496009740512_752071170_n-1634144531385.jpg?crop=1%3A1&amp;width=56&amp;dpr=2&amp;format=jpg&amp;auto=webp&amp;quality=80 2x\" data-cy=\"progressive-image\"\/><\/div>\n<p><span class=\"stack jsx-2509706801 jsx-3630940851\"><span class=\"stack jsx-2959124702 jsx-702910195 author-sign-off-header\"><\/p>\n<p>Will Borger<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"stack jsx-2509706801 jsx-1220387432\"\/><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"interface jsx-1132626198 sign-off-text\">\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Will Borger is an IGN freelancer. You can find him on Bluesky @edgarallanbro.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/span><\/section>\n<p><\/output><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<center><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/articles\/exterminauts-wants-you-to-live-a-9-to-5-life-that-bites-back-ign-preview\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article At Source <\/a><br \/>\n<center\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Key Preview Takeaways: It\u2019s a three-player PvE shooter with a novel premise: you\u2019re an everyman in a sci-fi world. Jobs that required cooperation were among&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":85212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[30057,9039,30056,402,2204],"class_list":["post-85211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-gadgets-reviews","tag-9to5","tag-bites","tag-exterminauts","tag-life","tag-live","wpcat-32-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/85212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}