Project: Mist — Survival Horror With Kaiju-Scale Threats and a Gravity Gun

Overview

Project: Mist is an open-world survival horror where you explore a lonely island, gather and craft, and build fortified bases to withstand a food chain that sees you as a snack. The marketing pillars are clear: freedom-first progression (no forced quest markers), roaming colossal monsters that reshape your plans, and a headline tool—the Gravity Gun—that doubles as construction helper and physics-driven weapon. The current Steam page lists Q4 2025 for Early Access, with the developer and publisher both shown as Chicken Launcher and a free demo having been publicly available. [Steam page]

“Build and defend your base while crafting traps, siege weapons, upgrading your gear and Gravity Gun. Survive or perish while unraveling the secrets behind the giant wall!”

Creditable Trailers (Embedded)

Note: Third-party gameplay captures are included for practical gameplay context; official information should be cross-checked with the Steam page and developer posts.

The Island: Quiet Dread, Big Silhouettes

Mist’s island blends damp conifer forests, rusting industrial relics, stark bridges, and monolithic structures that hint at a larger experiment—or catastrophe. The headline strangeness is vertical: leviathan-class creatures cruising the sky, long-legged horrors pacing the treeline, and derelict mechs sleeping under the pines. This shifts survival away from simple line-of-sight ambushes into a game of route planning and skyline awareness. The fog isn’t just an aesthetic; it’s a tactical constraint that makes every run feel like a small expedition.

The Survival Loop

1) Scavenge & Scout

Early hours are all about finding safe corridors and learning what the island will tolerate. The mist thins and pools, making sightlines inconsistent. “One more cliff” greed is punished; at night, elevation and cover matter. This isn’t a breadcrumb hunt; your journal fills with routes, not quests.

2) Build & Bunker

You’ll graduate from lean-tos to layered fortifications. Visuals and community clips highlight walls, platforms, bunkers, and traps, leaning almost tower-defense when sieges kick off. A standout tease is dynamic destruction—bridges and wooden structures that erode piece-by-piece—and destructible mining for resource nodes. Those two ideas alone add replay texture: improvisation under structural failure feels different every time.

3) Wire the Teeth

Traps, siege weapons, power mines, and energy turrets promise flexible “kill funnels.” If AI pathing holds up, you’ll be able to bait roamers into crossfires, or adapt on the fly with physics props.

4) Craft & Cook

Food and consumables matter. Farming plots and cooking give stat buffers and breathing room; the island’s threat economy means your menu is really a risk budget. Crafting spans melee to ranged weaponry and utility tools, with rarer materials gating late-game toys.

5) Fight—or Kite

Combat reads as deliberate and resource-constrained. Ammo matters, cover matters, and kiting is legitimate. The principle is simple: geometry is a weapon. The Gravity Gun makes that literal.

The Gravity Gun: Physics as a Survival Verb

More than an homage, Mist’s Gravity Gun looks like a Swiss-army solution to both construction and combat. Haul beams into place faster; yank loose planks to collapse a ramp mid-chase; snatch your own power mine and yeet it into a charging brute. Survival games often hand you spreadsheets; Mist hands you a toy-box. The result is player expression—the kind of messy saves and slapstick escapes that produce shareable clips and repeat runs.

Co-Op: Two Brains, One Whale Problem

The Steam page lists Online Co-op, which changes the island’s calculus. One player scouts while another fortifies; one kites a roamer through a kill zone while another mans siege gear. Co-op survival lives or dies on netcode and enemy behavior synchronization; assuming stability, Mist’s trap + physics combo could be a hilarious, chaotic highlight.

Release Window, Developer, and Publishing Notes

As of mid-October 2025, the Steam page shows Early Access in Q4 2025. The current listing credits Chicken Launcher as both developer and publisher. That’s notable because the game was originally announced in October 2023 with Awaken Realms as publisher. Press archives still reflect that reveal, but the Steam page is the freshest source and should be treated as the live reference for publishing status and dates.

Source triangulation: Steam store page (current), Gematsu reveal (historical context).

How It Plays (from Public Footage & Demo Captures)

Across official trailers and creator captures, the rhythm is clear: quiet exploration → spike of panic → scrabble to survive. The Gravity Gun’s ergonomics look snappy; base building shows grid-snap plus physics-assisted placement. Enemy silhouettes are readable at distance, but fog and elevation introduce “late surprises.” Ammunition remains precious, so kiting through geometry you prepared is key. If dynamic destruction and trap chaining behave as shown, late-game sieges should feel like handcrafted set pieces you stage for yourself.

Tech & Specs

The minimum PC specs on Steam are modest (e.g., GTX 750 / Radeon HD 7770-class GPUs listed), signaling broad reach on older rigs. That said, survival sandboxes with roaming giants and physics interactions stress pathfinding, LOD, and streaming—the real test will be stability during multi-enemy sieges and co-op sessions. Since the demo has circulated, expect early benchmarks from creators to loosely bracket performance; always treat the live build as authoritative.

Where It Sits in 2025’s Survival-Horror Crowd

Plenty of 2025 survival titles promise crafting, base-building, and big monsters; few pitch sky-whales drifting over your greenhouse. Mist’s flavor is in the tone cocktail—lonely exploration, surreal megafauna, and physics-forward problem-solving. Instead of checklist content, it’s selling memorable problems. If Early Access lands with steady cadence and AI that respects (and breaks) your fortifications in interesting ways, this could be the game people reference when they talk about “the run where the whale blotted out the moon and we won anyway.”

Risks & Unknowns (Honest Fine Print)

• AI vs. Player Creativity: Selling “roaming colossi” is easy; making them feel clever against 10,000 player-made base shapes is hard. Siege boredom or pathing exploits are the main risk.
• Scope Creep in Early Access: The Steam copy outlines a 1.0 punch-list; survival sandboxes are notorious for slow scope drifts. Watch for update cadence after the EA launch.
• Netcode & Physics: Co-op + physics is where desync gremlins live. If everything stays synced, the Gravity Gun becomes the co-op toy; if not, it’s frustration fuel.

Wishlist / Demo

You can wishlist—and historically, a free demo has been available—on Steam:

Project: Mist on Steam

Sources & Further Reading

1. Steam — Project: Mist (current release window, features, specs, co-op)
2. YouTube — Official Gameplay Reveal Trailer
3. YouTube — Open-World Survival Horror Gameplay Trailer
4. YouTube — New Gameplay Demo (12 min, 4K) — third-party capture
5. Gematsu — Announcement coverage (Oct 17, 2023; publisher credit at reveal)
6. Destructoid — Commentary on “The Forest with flying whales” (Oct 17, 2023)
7. Game8 — Overview (Sept 17, 2025)
8. SteamDB — App metadata reference

Quotations are short excerpts from the Steam page used for identification and review purposes.