Video Game / Into the Radius

Into the Radius is a 2020 VR Survival Horror game developed and published by CM Games for PC VR, Meta Quest 2, and Meta Quest 3 headsets. It has been described as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in VR.

The game takes place in an alternate reality where, in 1987, the "Pechorsk Event" changed everything for a quiet Soviet mining town. Locals described the event as a short earthquake, which caused clouds of dust to rise into the sky, reducing visibility to almost nothing. After the dust settled, they stated seeing a huge dark-red orb in the sky, with black ash floating around the area.

By 2002, the United Nations Pechorsk Special Committee (UNPSC) still administers the Pechorsk Security Zone around the Pechorsk Radius, and no one is allowed to enter aside from the UNPSC specialists. Inside, it has been almost completely abandoned and stands as an isolated and blighted territory. Rumors, conspiracies, and legends continue to emerge - alluding to wondrous artifacts, deadly anomalies, and bizarre entities that inhabit the once quiet mining region.

The player, known only as Explorer #61, awakens in the Pechorsk Radius, with no memory of who they are or how they got there. They make contact with a disembodied voice who calls herself Katya, who is happy that someone is able to hear them finally. Together, Explorer #61 and Katya embark on quest to regain the player's memories, as well as find Katya and free her from whatever prison she has been stuck in.

On April 11th, 2021, the game received its 2.0 update, which reworked the map, progression, enemies and graphics. As such, some of the information below may be out of date.

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The game contains examples of the following tropes:

• 20 Bear Asses: In 1.0, it was common for missions to require Explorer #61 to return various artefacts that were dropped by killing enemies. It wasn't uncommon for players to stock up and then complete a series of quests. This was removed from 2.0, where all artefacts are found in anomaly fields.
• Alternate History: Starting in 1987 when the Pechorsk Event happened.
• Ambiguous Situation: The setup for the story. Nobody really understands what the Radius is, how it came to be, or what it even does. On a smaller scope, Explorer #61 and Katyana are not sure what has happened to either of them. Katyana says she is trapped, but does not know where or why and the player character has no memory of what happened to them.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The game has three autosave slots that activate very frequently (usually every five minutes). This is very useful when the physics engine decides to eject the player's gun into the stratosphere or inside a wall.
• Apocalyptic Log: 2.0 introduced new sets of collectables that tell stories of various locals and explorers, most of them ending badly.
• Arbitrary Gun Power: Somewhat averted, as weapon damage is determined only by the caliber of ammunition used.
• Awesome Personnel Carrier: Certain areas of the zone are guarded by shadowy BTR.
• Bayonet Ya: The primary advantage of the SKS before 2.0, as it came with a retractable bayonet that didn't break.
• Blatant Lies: The trailer for 2.0 contains many, often juxtaposed with reality. Examples include:
  • A balanced diet, shown as old canned food rations.
  • Latest technology, as the Explorer finds an old, rusty PM pistol from the 1950s.
  • Comfortable living environments. As long as one thinks old rail cars and storage containers converted to living spaces count.
• Boring, but Practical: The SKS rifle in 1.0. Despite being a WW 2 era weapon, it was considered to be one of the best weapons in the game. This is due to using one of the strongest ammo types (7.62x39mm) and using AKM magazines, meaning 30 rounds in each magazine. Its main strength came from its attached bayonet, which made the rifle into a spear, allowing Explorer 61 to safely engage most melee enemies. This meant that the player could use the SKS all the way to the end of the game. This was changed in 2.0, where the SKS lost its bayonet. It remains a viable weapon, but it can only take a scope as an attachment and no longer functions as a spear. The new security level system also means that when it unlocks, Explorer 61 can only buy short 10 round magazines, instead of full 30 round magazines. This means that once Explorer 61 upgrades their security level, they are likely to pick a new rifle with more attachment points.
• Breakable Weapons: Weapons as well as detachable magazines for firearms slowly deteriorate from use, requiring Explorer #61 to either pay to repair their gear or maintain it themselves.
• Closed Circle: Outsiders can not go too deep into the Zone without falling ill, and those that were caught inside the Radius can not leave it without dying from unknown causes.
• Collateral Damage: Mimics sometimes will shoot through other Radius entities if they are between you and them.
• Concealment Equals Cover: Averted. Bullets, whether they be from the player or from Mimics, can pierce through thin materials.
• Crate Expectations: There are hidden supply caches in the Pechorsk Radius that the player can find for various supplies. They are either orange wooden crates or long, blue and white plastic cases containing ammunition, equipment, or even firearms.
• Deadly Gas: The Haze anomaly is a cloud of moving green gas that damages Explorers who wander into it.
• Death Is Cheap: While many have simply died, it is noted in-universe that some explorers who die in the Radius return a few days later, with no memory of how they got there.
• Diegetic Interface: The player's stats are shown on the wristwatch they carry, depicting their current health. stamina, fatigue, current time, and a compass that always points toward the Radius (North). The Player can also bring up tooltips for any item they carry, but otherwise the game does not have tooltips available.
• Dowsing Device: Artifacts and Dark Cores can only be found using a detector device. It will start clicking once you are within range of an artifact and click faster when you get closer. The detector will also change color from blue to green based on your orientation from the artifact.
• Elite Mooks: Armored variants of mimics, which can deflect smaller caliber rounds.
• Equipment-Based Progression: Your starter Makarov will aid you for your first journey into the Security Zone, but you will need to buy new guns and ammo to increase your chances of survival. The money you make from completing missions (especially story missions) will give you more than enough to upgrade your arsenal to include semi-automatic shotguns, assault rifles, and explosive grenades. Further enforced in 2.0, where you have security clearances that need to be acquired to buy more powerful weapons.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: From anomalies to monsters, almost everything in the Radius is out to get the player.
• Forbidden Zone: The Pechorsk Radius. Only specialists from the UNPSC are allowed to enter it, and even then many of them never return.
• Gameplay-Guided Amnesia: The game starts with the player awakening in the Radius, with no memory of how they got there or who they are. They later discover they are listed as UNPSC Explorer #61, who had been missing for around a year since they checked in at the base.
• Ghost Town: Pechorsk, naturally, along with the surrounding villages.
• Gun Accessories: Weapons can be equipped with various attachments, such as sights, flashlights, silencers or grenade launchers. They can be purchased at the UNSPC base or found in supply crates hidden in the Radius. 2.0 upped this by allowing almost every weapon to be upgraded with rails, letting the player use any attachment they want wherever they want.
• Healing Factor: The Regen artifact functions as such, as Explorer #12 describes these effects when squeezing the artifact. Otherwise, Explorer #61 needs to rest or use medical syringes.
• Hell Is That Noise: Each entity and anomaly in the Radius make distinct noises to alert you of their presence If you hear it, it's likely a Radius entity that's spotted you or an anomaly you're about to walk into.
• Hollywood Silencer: Silencers reduce sound to level where enemies will not notice it, even if shot right next to. Alternately, the player can use subsonic ammunition that has the same effect, but at the cost of power.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Averted. Everything the player carries must be either in the backpack, on their vest or in their hand, and there is a carrying limit of 50 kilograms. Furthermore, there is no grid system for the backpack so player needs to organize their gear themselves if they want easy access to it.
• Justified Extra Lives: In-universe, it is noted that those that "die" within the Pechorsk Radius eventually return. The only way to permanently die is to leave the Radius, at which point a person becomes deadly sick.
• Limited Loadout: Zig-zagged. The Player can carry on their body one pistol and one large weapon, and another larger weapon on the side of the backpack. However, they can have as many pistols, grenades and other weapons inside their backpack as long as they can cram them in there.
• Mook Maker:
  • Harvesters spawn Shades whenever they are under attack. There are also anomalies that spawn Fragments periodically.
  • 2.0 introduced new Rift anomalies that will continue to spawn new enemies until destroyed by the player.
• Mr. Exposition: Explorer #12, whose logs describe various anomalies and creatures encountered in the zone.
• Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight: Knives aren't the most useful weapons against most Radius creatures. Aside from Mimics, Sliders, Fragments and Hunters are tough creatures that require player to quickly go for a stab and then retreat to avoid retaliation. Spawns are more or less only creatures that can be easily killed with knifes.
• Not the Intended Use: Several examples.
  • In 1.0, the SKS bayonet was meant to be a back up tool to allow players to defend themselves in case they forgot to bring a knife, or to finish off wounded enemies. However, players more often than not used the weapon as a spear, as using the incorporated knife was often better than wasting bullets on enemies.
  • The physics engine has some interesting quirks. Items that have not been touched by the player for a certain time are frozen in place until picked up again by the player. This has lead players to creating their own furniture, such as chairs, shelves and tables, from stuff like notes and empty ammo boxes.
• Ominous Fog: A thick fog surrounds the few clear areas within the Security Zone, including your base of operations. However, it's function depends on game version:
  • In 1.0, the fog is far less ominous. When entered, it leads players to the UNPSC base. In fact, the UNPSC emergency guide recommends walking into the fog.
  • In 2.0, the fog will simply lead people back into the area they left, just from random direction. UNPSC has series of ropelines going in and out of the Radius to guide people to different areas through the fog.
• One Bullet Clips: Averted. Not only do magazines retain their cartridges, the player also needs to manually fill them rather than have them automatically filled.
• Reality Is Out to Lunch: The Pechorsk Radius is a localized version. Objects float in the air, the ground has been twisted, there are various anomalies everywhere, people have been turned into black charcoal-like statues and there is a giant glowing object in the sky. However, outside the Pechorsk Radius the world seems to continue normally.
• Reliably Unreliable Guns: The more damaged the gun is, the more likely it is to jam, requiring the round to be rechambered.
• Resurrective Immortality: All people that survived the Event received this. As long as they die within the Zone, they are eventually resurrected within the fog. The only way for survivors to die permanently is to leave the Zone, at which point they will die due to unknown causes, permanently.
• Resources Management Gameplay: Several ways. Not only does the player need to carry their ammo, they need to carry magazines, food, medical supply and any other equipment. The problem comes with the fact that there is no easy to navigate grid system with the backpack, so the player needs to arrange their stuff in such a way they can easily access it when needed.
• Ruins of the Modern Age: The Pechorsk Radius has more than its fair share of destroyed architecture.
• Scenery Gorn: Very little of the natural beauty has been left untouched, with everything in various levels of disrepair or suspended in some strange way mid-collapse.
• Sentry Gun: The UNPSC base hosts one, presumably to defend it from various creatures of the Radius. It tracks on the player every time they enter the base, implicitly threatening them to raise their hands as instructed during the first visit, but refusing to do so will never cause it to actually fire on them.
• Shooting Gallery: There is an optional shooting range that takes place in a supposed UNPSC training facility. The player has unlimited funds to purchase whatever weapons or gear they want to try out, and includes a timed training course where you must shoot cardboard cutouts while reaching the exit as quickly as possible.
• Sprint Meter: The stamina meter works like this.
• Suicidal Sadistic Choice: The Radius itself offers one to Explorer #61 at the end. They can either kill themselves, or Katya. Whichever is left alive is allowed to become a real human and leave the Radius zone. Based on the end, the Radius seems to actually uphold their end of the bargain.
• Super Drowning Skills: Explorer #61 can walk underwater but not swim. If you are fully submerged, your stamina will be emptied before you start losing health.
• Survivalist Stash: Notes from victims of the Pechorsk Event often point you towards the location of a small supply cache usually containing a new gun for you to collect. You will have to figure out what area the notes refer to, as they do not add map markers for you to follow.
• Taken for Granite: You can find various denizens of Pechorsk, USSR and NATO troops as UNPSC explorers, frozen as a black coal like substance that breaks the moment any force is applied to it. Chunks then stay floating in the air before disintegrating. Touching some of these statues allows Explorer #61 to hear peoples last thoughts before the Event.
• Teleport Spam: The signature move of the Sliders. Their only weakness is that it takes them a moment to wind up an attack after teleporting to the player, giving them time to back up.
• Timed Mission: 2.0 introduced the new Tide mechanic, where the zone resets and enemies respawn, alongside moving around items and loot. This in turn has made every mission into a timed mission, as you need to complete them before the Tide hits. Thankfully, Tide comes in slowly, often many in-game days/hours in, giving the player plenty of time to get in and get out.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Understandable, since you are only one in the UNPSC base, with everyone else gone.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Neither you nor Katya are real humans. Both of you were created by the Radius in an attempt to create a perfect replica of human. The Radius has become good enough to fool UNPSC computers.
• Underground Monkey: Armoured variants of normal enemies are otherwise the same, but have new distortion applied to them.
• Unfriendly Fire: Once a bullet leaves the barrel, it cares not who it hits. The Player can accidentally kill themselves from a ricochet, or even shoot themselves with their own weapons.
• Visible Invisibility: A variant of Shades are almost translucent, making the difficult to see. This is compensated by them taking less damage to dispatch.
• Wizard Needs Food Badly: Going without food for too long reduces the stamina meter, forcing the player to walk, as well as causes their stomach to rumble, making them easier to spot by enemies.
• You Wake Up in a Room: Sort of. You wake up in a small, isolated area of the Radius, surrounded by anomalies in Fragments. Your first goal is to return back to UNPSC base.
• Zombie Gait: Fragments, a type of enemy, walk like this.