Directive 8020 is Dark Pictures' most ambitious entry yet – and its most forgiving

Supermassive Games' The Dark Pictures Anthology poses the question: how would you actually fare in a horror movie? And the studio's latest horror game, Directive 8020, is no different.

The interactive survival horror series as a whole has seen us unearthing the secrets of a ghost ship, navigating the fog of an eerie New England town, descending into the depths of a Sumerian temple, and even investigating a replica of H.H. Holmes’ notorious Murder Castle.

Meanwhile, the studio’s standalone titles, The Quarry and Until Dawn, have placed us in the bloodied sneakers of oblivious teens trapped in scenarios ripped straight from the slasher playbook. While the cast, locations, and twists have changed, the goal has ultimately remained the same: try to keep everyone alive. Well, if that’s what you want to do – who am I to judge if you take pleasure in the demise of a mouthy jock?

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This core element remains unchanged in The Dark Pictures Anthology's latest entry, Directive 8020. Once again, you act as the puppet master of fate for a cast of diverse personalities, trapped in a nightmare situation that is up to you (and maybe some friends) to navigate them through. This time, the unfortunate bunch is the crew of the Cassiopea, a colony spaceship travelling to the planet Tau Ceti f in hopes that it can be terraformed into a livable planet, offering humanity salvation as Earth withers and dies.

Yes, a bit like Interstellar. But, as you may expect, the mission isn’t quite as straightforward as it seems. 12 light-years from home, having just awoken from a four-year cryogenic nap, the crew finds that they’re far from alone, as a shape-shifting extraterrestrial (much like The Thing) being has infiltrated the ship and is impersonating them, making it hard to know who to trust.

Directive 8020’s story plays out across eight episodes, each roughly an hour long, meaning you can feasibly play through them all in a day if you’re so inclined. It’s a bit of a slow-burn, almost too slow at times, but the many twists and turns (that I won’t spoil here), combined with the constant sense of uneasiness about who you can trust, keep the story gripping. As with previous games in the series, picking up the breadcrumbs of clues scattered through the eight episodes is pivotal in helping you make critical decisions down the line that could lead to the death of a character.

Collectibles, including documents, video logs, and personal belongings, are worth seeking out as they delve deeper into the crew, their mission, and hint at what exactly is tormenting them. Unlike in previous entries, there are no premonitions here to steer you; some detective work is required to connect the dots and make the “right” choices.

On rare occasions, these collectibles require you to solve a puzzle to access them, but these feel superficial for the most part: the ease of their solutions makes them feel like an unnecessary obstacle. Some require you to find and move a power cell or reroute power to unlock a door, while some require you to solve a rudimentary lock-picking puzzle that simply tasks you to select segments of a circle to complete it (or select an orange segment that immediately unlocks it). While finding another piece of the story puzzle feels rewarding, I wish there were more to find, with more challenging ways to access them, or more environmental clues.

While Directive 8020 looks great – especially its cutscenes – the ship itself feels a bit bare at times. Sure, practicality is the aim of the game in space, but a few more personal touches and varied environments – as we’ve seen in previous Dark Pictures games – could have helped immerse us in Supermassive’s sci-fi world, especially given the detail of its characters.

There are five playable members of the Cassiopea for the majority of the game, but seven in total if you include those in the first episode. Each looks incredibly detailed, with pilot Briana Young instantly recognizable as No Time To Die’s Lashana Lynch. However, as we’ve seen with some Dark Pictures characters before (most notably, personally, Ashley Tisdale in House of Ashes), there is, at times, a hint of them looking dead behind the eyes. However, the acting and voice performances are excellent, with Kathryn Wilder and Danny Sapani in particular knocking it out of the park as Anders and Commander Stafford, respectively.

Supermassive has worked to flesh these characters out through dialogue, collectibles, and backstories, but some are definitely more interesting than others. The friendship between ballsy medical specialist Cooper and plucky science officer Anders never failed to make me smile, while technical engineer Cernan’s philosophical takes on life and death struck a chord. However, it was much more difficult to connect to Young, Eiselle, and Stafford, with each falling a bit flat.

Playing in Solo Story Mode enables you to take control of all crew members, while the return of Movie Night Mode offers you the ability to play couch co-op with up to five players, with each player able to control a member of the crew. While online multiplayer isn’t available at launch, Supermassive Games has confirmed this mode will be released in a free update after launch.

Second chances

While the core of Directive 8020 stays true to what we’ve come to expect from The Dark Pictures Anthology, there are a few new additions that may split series fans. The first is the new Turning Points feature, which allows you to rewind a scenario at any time. For example, if you are in a chase and you miss a quick-time event (QTE) resulting in a character’s death or make the “wrong” decision in a conversation, which results in an unwanted outcome, you can immediately replay the scene and do it differently. All your decisions and the overall story path are tracked in the Turning Points tree, allowing you to replay scenes whenever you wish.

I had mixed feelings about this at first, as a large part of what makes Dark Pictures games unique and tense is the weight (and irrelevance) of your actions. If you screw up, you have to live with the consequences. However, this can be frustrating for many players – especially if someone dies early and you want a no-death run. The good news is you don’t have to use the feature.

Directive 8020 offers two Playstyles: Explorer and Survivor. Explorer gives you access to Turning Points, while Survivor offers the classic experience, where there are no second chances. You can switch between playstyles during the game, too, so if you think you don’t need a safety net, there’s always the option to implement it later.

But Turning Points isn’t perfect. While it makes it easier to see the game’s various endings and outcomes, and to pick up missed collectibles, navigating the paths can be a pain. My first piece of advice is to first play through Explorer without using this replay feature as much as possible, using it only to rectify major mistakes or deaths. Initially, I jumped back and forth in episode one to see different outcomes, and it seriously impacted the flow and impact of the story. Once I used it sparingly, I enjoyed the game much more.

However, upon completing the game, I thought the feature would make it pretty easy to explore different paths and endings quickly, as I could jump back in time like Dr. Strange, change a choice, then jump forward to a different outcome. That’s not the case. While it is easier to explore the full game than in previous Dark Pictures titles, this can become monotonous as you rewatch the same cutscenes repeatedly without the option to skip.

What’s more, to alter certain outcomes, and therefore unlock new ones, you must replay an entire path again from one pivotal choice, or make several smaller choices. This may be lazy from my side, but for a feature meant to encourage exploring the story’s various facets, it can make it a serious slog, and I can’t help but think it would be more beneficial to players if you could replay a pivotal decision and then jump forward to just before when that decision takes effect (so long as you’ve already reached that point before).

Silent as the grave

To date, the action elements in Supermassive’s interactive survival horror games have boiled down to running for your life or smashing a QTE. While this survival horror certainly sees you legging it from the shape-shifting beasties, there are (thankfully) fewer QTEs than we’ve seen before. Instead, there are stealth sequences that see you sneaking around the lifeform, hiding behind crates, walls, and seating, to get to your destination, using a scanner to keep track of the enemy.

While these stealth elements do add to the tension, they’re pretty mundane. You see your destination, keep track of the creature’s predictable patrol sequence, and sneak over there – occasionally triggering a distraction to help or maneuvering around noisy glass. If they catch you, you will either be smooshed or, more than likely, given a QTE chance to stun them and run to the end point. Supermassive almost plays it too safe with this new feature.

These slower sequences have the potential to instill an Alien Isolation-esque terror in you. Supermassive could have included unpredictable enemy movements or alternative escape route options to up the ante and make you feel like you’re one misstep from being torn open like a bag of crisps. I understand, the studio likely doesn’t want to alienate its fanbase, but it's hard not to make comparisons to sci-fi horrors like SOMA and Alien Isolation, which simply implemented this better.

Similarly, there are a few first-person elements included, too, that don’t feel fully utilized. When you crawl into a vent, the camera view shifts from third-person to first-person, reflecting the uneasy, claustrophobic feel of these tight spaces. The shape-shifting creature can’t get you in the vents; you simply use them to bypass obstacles and occasionally the enemy, which seems like a wasted opportunity. Pairing more hair-raising stealth moments with those oppressive spaces feels like a match made in heaven (or more likely hell), and yet Supermassive appears to simply dip its toe in the water.

Overall, Directive 8020 evolves The Dark Pictures Anthology series by offering improved graphics, more forgiving gameplay, and introducing new gameplay elements, but it doesn’t quite push the boundaries enough and lacks the bite of other sci-fi survival horrors – and prior titles in the series. If you’re a Dark Pictures fan, it’s well worth checking out, but I can’t help but wonder if it will mark a welcome turning point for the series as a whole.

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Accessibility features

Directive 8020 offers a handful of accessibility features, primarily focused on UI, QTEs, and subtitles. QTEs can be adjusted so that players can hold a button instead of bashing it, so the button you use on your controller for QTEs remains the same, and to disable the QTE timer. In addition, accessibility options offer the ability to enable a simplified UI font, to set puzzles to be completed with one input, remap controls, and to change the background opacity, size, colour, and more of subtitles and in-game text.

Directive 8020 also offers three preset difficulty options – Forgiving, Challenging, and Lethal – alongside a custom difficulty option that allows you to change QTE difficulty, enable or disable QTE warnings and threat indicators (and their colour), and adjust parry recharge time. However, we’d have loved to see the inclusion of a few more accessibility options, such as a dedicated colorblind mode.

How I reviewed Directive 8020

I reviewed Directive 8020 on PS5 on a Samsung Q80T QLED TV, using a DualSense Wireless Controller. I spent over 10 hours playing Directive 8020 in Solo Story mode, on Challenge difficulty, primarily using the Explorer playstyle. During this time, I completed all eight of the game's episodes (each of which takes around one hour to complete), explored various story paths and outcomes via the Turning Points feature, and aimed to collect as many collectibles as possible.

Having played every entry in the Supermassive Games' The Dark Pictures Anthology, as well as standalone titles The Quarry and Until Dawn – and being a keen survival horror fan – I was able to compare Directive 8020 to the studio's previous offerings and therefore offer insight into the key similarities and differences between their latest choice-based survival horror adventure and previous games.

First reviewed May 2026.