GTFO baddie is a screeching shadow and I don't like it

It might have a naff name, but four-player squad nightmare GTFO also has some scary monsters. This is that foggy, cavern-diving co-op shooter from some former Payday developers at 10 Chambers, remember? It was also one of the better bullet-dispensers I saw at E3 last month. However, I didn’t see this absolute night terror made manifest. It’s a new enemy which looks like a shadow, and only appears when you pass your flashlight over it. See it in the video below. It’s also got a screech like a good fork scraping across a bad plate. I hate it. Get it away from me.

It’s like some sort of banshee that the Devil opened in Photoshop and then he clicked “invert colours” and “export as .deadly_phantom”.

"The monster can only be made out when it's moving in relation to the surrounding light sources - such as a player’s flashlight," say 10 Chambers. "This makes it almost impossible to show the shadow enemy in a static screenshot, which is why the press material will only contain media showing it in motion."

A hard-to-capture shadow fiend is a good fit. Although "almost impossible" is an exaggeration. Obviously, it looks better in motion, but it only took me about 20 seconds to get a shot of a shady boy.

Hyperbole aside, this is good. One of the worries I had for GTFO when I played a demo at E3 is that the enemies didn’t seem very varied. Even different types of demonic hellbeast looked similar, apart from their size. A semi-invisible shadow monster feels like it’ll add some extra horror. It feels like something that belongs in this dusty future catacomb.

We’ll have a more detailed write-up of the demo soon. It won’t feature this dark fellow, but it does include some co-op hi-jinks. Getting through the underground levels involves unlocking doors with remote consoles using a Duskers-style command prompt, and fending off waves of twisted, fleshy monsters while hoofing it through cramped rooms. One of the other creepy enemies sends out blurry tendrils to sniff out the human lads.

The monsters (aliens?) are less scary once you get the hang of planting trip mines, or using glue guns to barricade doors. But as a team we still survived neither of our trips into this weird underground lair. It's not clear why the squad is being sent on these subterranean missions, but that’s something 10 Chambers Collective say will be revealed through team chatter and storytelling. Regardless, I enjoyed my time in the infested dust rooms, and will explain why soon.

GTFO is due out some time in 2018, say the developers.