SCP: 5k (previously SCP: Pandemic) is a Co-Op Multiplayer Tactical Shooter First-Person Shooter by indie development group Affray Interactive (a group of enthusiasts formed specifically to make this game) based on the SCP Foundation universe.
Specifically, the game is based on SCP-5000, a powered suit from the future containing a recording detailing how in the near future the SCP Foundation mysteriously determined it needed to wipe out the human race, and began to wage war on humanity using their vast resources including stockpiles of dangerous SCPs. Players take the role of an Anti-Foundation Alliance operative living in this dystopian future, engaging in incursions against the Foundation in up to 4-player co-op.
The game was released on Steam Early Access on February 22, 2022, and is still in active development.
SCP: 5k provides examples of:
- Advertised Extra: Earlier builds of the game involve fighting either zombies or enemy soldiers, with only a couple encounters with SCP-173 and the SCP-098s. Later builds include more SCPs, including ones unique to the game's setting such as a cognitohazard that chases the players through movie screens (SCP-7528), and spitting blooms on the sections of giant plant growing around the complex (SCP-1262), in addition to encounters with more iconic SCPs like 173 and 098.
- The Alliance: The Anti-Foundation Alliance, made up of various anomalous organizations who have banded together to stop the Omnicide, including the Global Occult Coalition and the FBI's Unusual Incidents Unit (UIU). While earlier versions of the game had the players being GOC members, currently the player characters are UIU members.
- Bad Future: The game is set in one described by the entry of SCP-5000, in which the Foundation suddenly performs a Face–Heel Turn and starts unleashing SCPs with the goal of exterminating the human race.
- Brown Note: There are several theatre rooms in Area 12's Education Centre displaying a cognitohazard that will cause players to shoot themselves if they spend too much time near them, with the hazard jumping between screens in the theatre rooms and in the hallways in order to hunt the players down. Shutting down the projectors is required to access a keycard needed to progress. Unlike most examples, it doesn't matter if you are looking at it, what matters is if it can see you.
- Can't Move While Being Watched: SCP-173, probably the most well-known SCP, is an enemy that appears in this game. The game doesn't have blink mechanics, so you can freeze him just by looking in his direction, but at times you need to take your eyes off him to navigate or accomplish tasks, giving him opportunities to rush you. Thankfully he's not encountered alongside other enemies, or else playing the game in single-player would likely be impossible.
- Checkpoint Starvation: If your entire team runs out of lives, you have to play the entire level all over again. Given that the main level, Raid on Area 12, can be over an hour long, this can be frustrating if you get killed towards the end.
- Companion Cube: One of the side missions in Raid on Area 12 is to rescue Dave, his wife, and his two children. Dave and his family are cardboard boxes who don't seem to talk or move. Given the setting, though, it is entirely possible they really are alive.
- Dark Is Not Evil: In contrast to the white ones Foundation guards wear, the players wear navy blue coveralls, but are fighting to save humanity from being wiped out.
- Faceless Mooks: In addition to the ones mentioned below under Gas Mask Mooks, the D-Class enemies wear jumpsuits that hide their entire body, complete with a face-covering hood. This is intentional in-universe, as it is meant to dehumanize them in the eyes of the Foundation's researchers, so they feel less guilty about experimenting on them. The suits are also made to act as body-bags.
- Gas Mask Mooks: Both the players and enemy Foundation soldiers all wear gas masks. Justified, as both sides are fighting in a facility undergoing a total containment breach, which may include airborne hazards.
- Giant Enemy Crab: Giant, slightly-greater-than-human sized spider crabs (oversized instances of SCP-098) are one of the escaped SCP enemy types encountered.
- Going Critical: A somewhat more realistic example. At the end of the Raid on Area 12, your team purposefully causes a meltdown by destroying the cooling systems before restarting the site's nuclear reactor. However, there's no indication this will cause an explosion, and simply destroying the site's main power supply and irradiating it would render it unusable.
- Gun Accessories: The game has a fairly robust weapon customization system, at which you can kit up any of your guns with optics, foregrips, laser sights, suppressors, etc. at a weapons bench.
- Hellhound: Gorilla-sized, dog-like creatures known as Psi-Z Resonators and possibly based on SCP-939 appear as enemies.
- Light Is Not Good: In contrast to the navy blue ones the players wear, the Foundation guards wear white coveralls, and are trying to wipe out all of humanity.
- Mêlée à Trois: Foundation security soldiers and escaped SCPs are hostile to each other as well as to your team of AFA operatives. Can go even further in a few areas where there are also escaped D-Class test subjects, who are hostile to the Foundation, the escaped SCPs, and your team (though currently the escaped D-Classes can only run into escaped SCPs on a specific test map).
- One Bullet Clips: Averted due to the game's Tactical Shooter design; the game individually tracks how many bullets you have left in each carried magazine. Reload too frequently and you'll start cycling into partially spent mags. Fortunately, ammo pickups refill all your mags.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Raid on Area 12, the game's main campaign mission, is a raid on a Foundation facility where an infectious zombie plague known as "Psi-Z" is being developed. Having reached the facility, you find the zombies have broken loose and are overrunning the facility alongside other escaped SCPs. Said zombies are running "fast zombies" created from D-class test subjects and infected base personnel and security.
- Shout-Out: The achievement for opening a door with a passcode is "Tell me I'm not the most valuable member of this team".
- Super-Speed: SCP-173 moves super-humanly fast when not in your line of vision, able to cross hundreds of feet in a second.
- Tactical Shooter: The game is designed as one, with slower, more deliberate movement and gunplay, the ability to lean around corners, the lack of an on-screen crosshair and individual tracking of partially spent magazines, you dying in just a few hits, etc. However, you can refill your health and ammo by picking up medkits and ammo boxes found scattered around the level, although they're rarer than in more standard FPS games.
- Video-Game Lives: Each player starts with 2 lives. Die twice and that's it for you.
