As the first PS5 console exclusive release of 2026, I expected Code Violet to meet a certain level of quality that we’ve often seen from Sony-backed games. On paper, the idea had me hooked: a sci-fi horror with elements of both Dead Space and Dino Crisis. Developer TeamKill Media’s homage to these greats ended up feeling less earnest the more I played it. The results range from sort of seeing what they were trying to accomplish, to outright catastrophic at points. Code Violet’s fleeting moments of greatness are buried beneath a myriad of technical issues, uninspired gameplay, and some of the strangest design choices I’ve seen in a modern game.



Code Violet’s story throws players in the role of Violet Sinclair, a protagonist dropped into a bioengineering complex on an alien world overrun by prehistoric monsters. The narrative is fairly simple: figure out what happened to the complex while navigating the horrors that lurk around every corner. It’s a recipe for a good space-faring horror experience but Code Violet seems to undercut its own potential at every turn.



The narrative strings holding Code Violet together are paper-thin and so is the character writing. Some story threads even felt ripped straight out of other survival horror games (i.e. Dead Space’s obvious DNA sprinkled throughout the campaign). Violet doesn’t have any defining characteristics to latch onto apart from her sex appeal, which could be argued is overused to the point where it becomes a bit uncomfortable. You get a large assortment of exchangeable outfits for Violet and some of them look decent (like the Tron-esque neon suit or the Mortal Kombat-ish battle outfit) but most of them are kind of bland. The game’s abundance of questionable outfits, which can even be seen in cutscenes, either makes for some unexpected moments of comedy or completely pulls you out of the dramatic tension it’s trying to build.

It’s a recipe for a good space-faring horror experience but Code Violet seems to undercut its own potential at every turn.

It’s frustrating because when Code Violet actually takes itself seriously, I can see glimmers of greatness. In some sections, the game does an excellent job of building palpable dread and some of its dinosaur designs are very impressive. When it tries to give Violet a little more emotional depth, it does come across as shallow, but I can see the effort being put into it. It’s almost like there were two teams at TeamKill Media who had drastically opposing visions of what they wanted Code Violet to be, and now those ideas constantly clash in tone, themes, game design, and aesthetics throughout the experience. It’s very jarring which makes it even more frustrating that it turned out this way.



When it comes to gameplay, Code Violet opts for an over-the-shoulder third-person perspective not too dissimilar to Dead Space or Resident Evil. As mentioned before, the camera is a little too zoomed into Violet’s back, so it becomes hard to see or understand what’s happening on-screen during combat-heavy moments. When the action does pop off and you encounter the game’s roster of prehistoric enemies, there’s a sliver of fun to be had, I admit. Perhaps it’s just me being starved of a good survival horror game with dinosaurs in the last three decades, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt as much as I could.

Exploration is pretty straight-forward and I’m sure you’ve seen these types of map layouts a dozen times before. Between the action, Violet must solve puzzles, backtrack (frustratingly so) to find missing items or alternative routes, and slowly peel away the layers of its central mystery. Along the way, Violet meets side characters whose only purpose is to deliver exposition in long rambles that do little to grab your attention. The dialogue and writing aren't great either, but if you do lock in and pay attention, I’m sure you could take away some semblance of a decent story here – it’s just so padded out by a bunch of unnecessary garble most of the time.



I kept playing Code Violet hoping that at some point, the gameplay or story was going to click with me, but it never really happened. It just kept teetering on the edge of delivering something great but took every opportunity to make a U-turn. This is best encapsulated by the tone of the game. There are moments of genuine tension when the atmosphere builds and the sound design – the low snarls of enemies lurking in the shadows – does kind of put you on edge. However, as soon as you feel that tension start to build to a crescendo, one of three things take place: 1) the game’s horrendous enemy AI breaks, and your panic turns to laughter, 2) some inexplicable thing happens that cuts away from the suspense, or 3) the game just crashes. You won’t believe how many times that happened.

I kept playing Code Violet hoping that at some point, the gameplay or story was going to click with me, but it never really happened.

The combat, which should've been a home-run had it studied its inspirations a little more, comes across as uninspired and frankly, a little boring. There are long stretches of gameplay where you don't see action or something running mindlessly towards you but when things escalated, I prayed for the game to hold itself together and not tank the performance (more on that in a bit). To try and keep things fresh, various items that Violet can attain also give you defence or offence buffs but the upgrades are barely noticeable, especially with such a limited arsenal.



Visually, I can say Code Violet looks great in some parts, and weirdly outdated in others. Paying closer attention to textures, you’ll find really blurry backgrounds or muddied environments. Violet’s character model seems to have been given the most attention and she honestly looks good, but when you contrast that with the low-effort textures, it paints an uneven picture. In all fairness, the audio design is excellent when the game wants to create a looming sense of dread – arguably the cornerstone of any successful survival horror game – but it’s hard to appreciate the finer details of Code Violet when everything else is constantly going wrong around you.

As for Code Violet’s performance, I’d rather just rip the band-aid off: it’s a glitchy, broken mess. Five minutes into the game, I encountered a crash and from there on out, it came one after the other. I did my best to tinker with the settings on PS5 Pro and tried to eliminate as much problems as possible, but I couldn’t get the game to run at a stable framerate nor prevent it from crashing so frequently. The framerate fluctuates wildly in combat-heavy sections, and I’m pretty sure I hit single-digits too. Code Violet really needed more development time for polishing because it feels like it never left the alpha phase.



I know it sounds like I’ve given Code Violet a pretty hard time but in all honestly, I don’t hate it. It just doesn't do anything to particularly stand out except, well, be aggressively average. It’s a frustrating experience because I can see a concept like this working to some degree, if it were in more capable hands. It's only 8 hours long (that's how long it took me to reach the credits, even taking detours), but I felt exhausted, baffled and a bit relieved by the time it ended. I'd urge you to wait for a very steep price discount.