When I hopped over to Cologne to attend Gamescom 2026, one of my picks of the show was Exterminauts, an all-new PvE third-person shooter from Behaviour Interactive, the same guys who brought you Dead by Daylight. I got to play the game, which had just been revealed, and I got to grill the devs on what they were trying to achieve.
This weekend, I got hands-on with Exterminauts all over again, and I’m happy to report that it’s looking strong. The PvE market is huge right now, and this game is effectively Helldivers 2 meets ARC Raiders. It’s thick, stacked with content, has an entertaining and replayable gameplay loop, and it’s developing very nicely.
Here’s my full preview.
Exterminauts Doesn’t Take Itself Too Seriously
Exterminauts is all about intense entertainment under extreme pressure, and it delivers very well in that mission. You suit up, jet down onto a planet rife with alien threats, complete tasks, odd jobs, and collect a bit of loot, then zip back up to your orbital workstation, your ‘RIG’, with the spoils of war.
It’s densely packed with progression mechanics, and it can quickly become overwhelming, but ultimately, it’s quite a light-hearted game that puts humour, a satirical core theme, and tongue-in-cheek comments front and centre, which is nice. It’s not serious about slaying hordes of grotesque aliens.
Even the aliens’ names and appearances are pretty laughable, but in a good way. They’re inventive.
I’ll be frank; it’s far from perfect right now, but the version I played was a beta, so it’s to be expected. The movement feels a bit clunky and you ‘slide around’ a bit, plus I think the difficulty for solo players will really need adjusting, but it’s more than doable. I went solo into a more hazardous mission very early on, and while it was tough, I accomplished what I’d set out to do.
In some ways, Exterminauts is an extraction shooter. You kit up with a loadout, complete with kinetic weapons, industrialized weapons, augmentations, defensive and offensive abilities, elemental grenades, and so on, and then you jet into a ‘work order’, or a mission. From there, you’re free to move around as you see fit, engaging in fights, looting things, and discovering secrets and ‘odd jobs’.
When you’ve completed your main tasks, it’s up to you to make it to an extraction point, enduring a countdown and waves of enemies before zipping back up into the inky blackness above.
That sounds like an extraction game to me.
What I love about Exterminauts is the overall theme. I’m a huge Fallout fan, so the notion of poking fun at mega-corps is familiar to me, and that’s Exterminauts through and through. Humanity has become obsessed with securing Polymorphic Plasma, a resource with endless capabilities, but to get it, they need to go tooth and nail with aliens aplenty.
That’s where you come in. You’re something of a contractor, diving into these hazardous environments to pull off the impossible, fixing machines, repairing refineries, securing gear, and battling hordes.
You work your way through certifications, earn promotions, complete gigs, and secure sponsorships from various corporations as you progress. There are specializations and challenges galore, data disks to uncover and subroutines to unlock, a trading station to enjoy, and customization out the wazoo.
What surprised me a lot is how the game approaches the typical battle pass mechanic. There are multiple in-game currencies, including Blackburn Scrip, Supply Vouchers, Credits, and Transit Tokens. You earn Transit Tokens for completing ‘gigs’ and levelling up, and by accumulating enough, you can get even the more premium battle pass, no questions asked.
You craft augments for your weapons, strap on increasingly powerful equipment as you rank up, and fight through tougher environments. Eventually, you’ll be a s**t-hot Exterminaut battling through a level eight Hazard, taking down ferocious boss-like enemies with reckless abandon, but it’s a road to get there.
As you explore each map, you can use an Overdrive system to take down tougher enemies, power things up, boost traversal mechanics, and repair deployables, which adds a little strategy to each fight. You get a certain number of respawns per raid, and once they’re gone, they’re gone.
As I said, there’s plenty of meat on the bones of Exterminauts.
I would recommend playing it with other people, though. I was playing solo for the majority of my preview, and it was hard-as-nails at times, but not impossible. The PvE thing is a huge win with me, though. I’d happily play solo for as long as I could, but no way do I fancy trying out a higher Hazard zone beyond what I experienced.
I can see Exterminauts doing quite well at launch, whenever that might be. It’s solid enough as a third-person shooter with great opportunities for replayability, and with friends, it’s much more entertaining. It’s reminiscent of both Helldivers 2 and ARC Raiders, and they’re hugely successful and popular games, so on paper, it should do well!
Let us know on the Insider Gaming Discord server if you’re interested in Exterminauts.
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Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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