Team Jade's Project Spectrum is much more than a horror spinoff of Delta Force

Team Jade has already flexed its FPS muscles with the popular Delta Force, but with Project Spectrum, it's taking a tactical shooter core and doing something radically different with it. Combining elements of survival games, the asymmetrical feel of Dead by Daylight, extraction shooters like Hunt Showdown and Escape From Tarkov, and even CRPGs, it's trying to do an awful lot at once. At Gamescom, I was one of the lucky few to see it in action behind closed doors, and I asked Team Jade about what it's trying to achieve with this creepy, atmospheric multiplayer game.

The first thing that strikes me with Project Spectrum is the collision of tactical, mil-sim shooter vibes and a haunting, supernatural setting that'd make the Resident Evils and Alan Wakes of the world take notice.

You play as an agent, and you're equipped with military-grade weapons. You communicate with others using a modern comms link, and you say things like 'copy that.' In that sense, it feels very much like Delta Force. But that's where the similarities end. Created by an entirely different unit within Team Jade, Project Spectrum is less about realistic, explosive battles, and more about creeping you out in ways only the best horror games can.

During my hands-off demo, a squad enters the grounds of a derelict mansion, tracking a mysterious dark energy source called the Ember by using a special camera. Mysterious creatures, not too dissimilar to Dementors from Harry Potter, float above the mansion and perch on its rooftops. Inside, shambling, zombie-esque creatures need to be stealthily navigated or taken out. As your sanity meter drops, your mind will play tricks on you. Dark, eerie illusions will tug at your vision, some of them manifesting as spectral beings that should also be considered hostile. Picture frames drop off walls. Wind howls through cracked windows. It's all pretty tense.

You then uncover one of the mysterious energy sources, and when you approach it, a towering, black-cloaked boss spawns. Time to go loud. After taking some damage, it splits into dozens of spider-like creatures - a hand-crafted molotov cocktail sends them scuttling back, merging into the boss once more. It's an intense fight, and game director Basil Wang tells me that these kinds of encounters are scattered all around Project Spectrum's map. They're also contextual to the area you find them in. He gives the example of creatures "inspired by x-rays" that you'll find as smaller, weaker enemies in the majority of locations, but they'll find extra strength and transform into a miniboss if you encounter one in the hospital that they call home.

However, there's a second way to play Project Spectrum, and that's as the Executioner. A corrupted monstrosity that can leap and dash with extreme speed, it's an agent's worst nightmare. This is where the game's asymmetrical multiplayer component comes in. Playing as the beast, you can track down and savage squads using wall hack-style scans and tendrils that extend to grab helpless victims. It looks absolutely awesome.

I am curious as to how you can actually become this creature, however, and how its extreme strength affects the balance of this PvPvE game. Wang is quite coy and doesn't reveal too much with his answer. "The Executioner is pretty powerful," he tells me. "We want to make sure it's super fun to play, but at the same time, we want this experience to be gated somehow. It's not going to be [an experience] you can binge. Players can also play as agents, who all have a great [amount] of freedom to be customized, so we want players to really experience that part of the game. Agents can die, and we don't want players stuck in a negative feedback loop forever, so we introduce the Executioner as a mixer to spice up the experience for players." Whether you earn Executioner status, become it during a match, or simply queue for it like you would a Killer in Dead by Daylight, the mechanics aren't really clear. For now, though, I'm fine just reveling in the carnage it creates.

Vice game director Rich Yu also assures me that, given this is an extraction FPS game, you don't have to fight or seek out the Executioner (or any challenging enemies, for that matter) if you don't want or need to. In doing so, he brings up an interesting comparison between Project Spectrum and a game I'd long forgotten about - 2015's Evolve.

"It's [also] an asymmetrical game, one monster versus four human players, but that game wasn't so successful because it had too many elements in regards to the balance, the tone, the pace, and the in-game upgrade of the monster," he says. "We [are trying] to avoid that same situation. In this game you don't have to face the Executioner every time - you just get what you need, and get out the map."

If you're playing as an agent, taking on the Executioner will require a decent amount of resources. The crafting system lets you make or upgrade weapons and create some "very interesting combos to help you survive," according to Wang. He gives the example of crafting a crawler bot that can carry smoke grenades, so you can command them to go somewhere out of your sight line or range and then remotely trigger the smoke.

I also quiz the team on what the overarching progression and metagame looks like - and it sounds like it'll be rather different than its extraction shooter rivals. "[In Project Spectrum's metagame], you can recruit, manage, and upgrade your agents. It's a little bit like a CRPG. So it's totally different from the Tarkov-like meta," Yu says, rather excitedly.

There are still plenty of questions that need answering about Project Spectrum, but that's only fair for a game that doesn't even have a name yet. I'm sceptical that this mixture of tactical FPS, extraction shooter, survival game, asymmetrical horror, and CRPG will seamlessly cohere into something that's completely problem-free, but I'm keen to be proved wrong on that. What I can say with confidence right now is that Team Jade's done a stellar job with the tone of Project Spectrum, the tactical combat experience looks extremely tight, and the power fantasy of the Executioner seems to be bang on the money. This is absolutely one to watch.