Code Violet Review

Survival horror fans have been missing one thing for more than 20 years: a real dinosaur horror game that could stand up to old favorites like Dino Crisis. Since that series went away, many projects have hinted at bringing the idea back, but most of them never made it out of development hell.

Code Violet, made by TeamKill Media, a small company best known for horror games that didn't get a lot of praise, filled that gap. This time, people had higher hopes. Code Violet aimed to be a spiritual follow-up to Dino Crisis. It combined third-person survival horror with dinosaurs, limited resources, and tense travel in a sci-fi future world.

From the start, it was clear what the goal was. Code Violet was made on Unreal Engine 5 and marketed strongly around its atmosphere and visuals. Its goal was to show that a small team could bring back a long-forgotten subgenre. This is important because the game always has to balance real emotion and creative vision with hard-to-ignore technical and design limits.

You play as Violet Sinclair in Code Violet. Violet is a woman who suddenly wakes up in a bioengineering center far away on another planet, where something terrible has gone horribly wrong. The hallways are full of dinosaurs, former employees are either dead or missing, and data pads and environmental signs show parts of a bigger experiment that are all over the place.

Genetic testing, corporate arrogance, and the human cost of scientific overreach are at the heart of the story.

The story uses a lot of common elements from science fiction: colonization in the far future, illegal bioengineering, and a lone survivor putting together the pieces of a disaster. Instead of straight explanations, a lot of the story is told through optional logs and stories about the environment.

The world is more interesting and makes more sense if you read notes and notepads. Deep down, there are themes of pain, autonomy, and exploitation that suggest a story with more depth than its pulpy beginning suggests.

The story has trouble with how it is told. The animation in cutscenes is stiff, and they often take away from how serious the writing is. Some major plot twists feel rushed or hard to understand because important reveals happen quickly and without enough buildup. Violet is written more as a way for the story to go than as a driving force in it.

Because she doesn't always say what she's thinking or feeling, her responses are limited, and her reasons aren't always made clear. This makes emotional moments less powerful than they should be. The ideas are big, but they are rarely carried out in a way that lives up to their promise.

At its core, Code Violet follows a standard survival horror loop: you have to explore environments that are connected to each other, handle limited resources, solve simple puzzles, and stay alive when you meet hostile creatures. Progress is meant to be slow. As you find important things, unlock shortcuts, and go back to earlier areas with new tools, new areas slowly become available.

This backtracking adds to the tension because even after an area has been cleared, it can still feel dangerous because of a lack of supplies and the fact that enemies can appear anywhere.

Almost all decisions are based on how scarce resources are. You can't have a lot of ammunition, healing items, or making supplies, so you have to constantly weigh the risks and benefits. Getting into battle with every enemy isn't always the best idea, especially at the beginning.

To save resources, it's sometimes best to run, hide, or force enemies through tight hallways. One of the best things about the game is the steady pressure, which is similar to how classic survival horror games are made.

In Code Violet, fighting is more about quickly moving around than shooting accurately. There are pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, assault rifles, and a few emergency tools like grenades that can be used as weapons. Because enemies are aggressive, you often have to fire while running away and diving backwards to make room.

When facing fast dinosaurs like Velociraptors, you need to be able to backstep quickly to avoid getting hit. This makes stress on paper. Combat is one of the least reliable parts of the game in real life. It can be hard to aim, auto-aim doesn't always work, and the camera often has trouble in small areas.

When people are pushed up against walls or corners, it's hard to see what's going on, which makes situations more like guessing games than skill-based ones. When smaller enemies swarm you, these issues get worse because missed shots feel more like technology issues than mistakes made by the player.

Enemy behavior makes fighting even less effective. Dinosaur AI is simple and easy to guess. Most enemies will charge right at you, attack, quickly run away, and then do it all over again. Boss fights usually go like this: they happen in large arenas where walking backwards, dodging, and shooting until the health bar runs out is the best way to win.

Over time, this lack of surprise kills the thrill, especially in a game that depends so much on fear and stress.

Puzzles do a little better, but they are still very easy. You can expect code locks, interactions with the surroundings, and simple detective work. They don't really test your brain, but they keep things moving by breaking up battle and exploration. It's not that the problems are bad; it's that they're not very interesting and rarely go beyond being useful filler.

There isn't a normal way to grind XP. You can move forward by getting better weapons, expanding your inventory, and entering new places. This keeps the focus on living instead of managing stats, which is good for the genre, but it also means that character growth is limited to upgrades for gear.

Code Violet is a mixed bag when it comes to how it looks. When it looks its best, it's really striking. Particle effects, environments that are soaked in rain, and dynamic lighting can all make for some really beautiful and tense times. One of the best creative choices in the game is how it mixes futuristic sci-fi technology with Victorian-style buildings.

This unique style gives the building a creepy, almost gothic feel that makes it stand out from other sci-fi horror scenes.

But the quality of the images isn't always the same. Flat textures and bad lighting are common in open places that show a lack of polish. The animations and facial reactions of the characters in cutscenes are especially rough. These parts are very different from the better graphics in-game, which makes the presentation feel uneven as a whole.

Another controversial part is the large number of pictures made by AI that are used in environmental assets like paintings and posters. These things don't fit in with the rest of the world; instead, they stand out in an awkward way, making the atmosphere less interesting instead of more interesting.

These creative shortcuts take away from a game that depends so much on mood and immersion.

Code Violet always shines when it comes to sound. A big part of building stress is caused by the sound design. A constant feeling of unease is created by distant dinosaur screeches, footsteps that repeat, metal creaking, and low mechanical hums. When you play with headphones on, the experience is greatly improved, and even quiet times can feel dangerous.

It sounds great when the dinosaurs are playing. It is very scary to hear a velociraptor scream from somewhere out of your line of sight, and the sounds often scare people more than the pictures or the way the game is played.

This strong soundscape helps make up for the game's flaws by adding to the tense mood that makes the best parts of the game what they are.

Code Violet is a game that is made up of contradictions. There's no doubt that the people who made it love classic survival horror movies, and the mood, sound design, and main loop sometimes work together to make really scary moments. It can be very immersive to explore the building when you're low on bullets, hear dinosaurs nearby, and slowly learn about the story's darker themes.

But bugs, bad controls, weak enemy AI, and a presentation that isn't always consistent pull you out of the experience over and over again. The desire shown often goes beyond what is done. While this has a strong base, it is held back by some rough spots that keep it from reaching its full potential.

People who are hungry for scary dinosaur stories might find that Code Violet scratches an itch that has been there for years. Just know that you will feel both tension and anger. This isn't a polished return to the genre; it's more of an imperfect, passionate try that shows what could be done with more polish.