The extraction shooter market is incredibly crowded right now. You drop in, grab loot, and try to escape before another player ruins your day. It’s a familiar loop. However, Active Matter throws a massive curveball into that formula by mixing realistic gunplay with a completely unhinged sci fi universe. Think space time anomalies, gravity manipulation, and monsters straight out of a horror novel, all wrapped up in a tactical military package.
Like its competitors, the main goal is survival and profit. You start in your personal Shelter, which acts as your main hub. Here, you can craft gear using the Replicator or break down junk through the Refiner. To craft high end weapons, you need to extract from a raid with an enriched version of that item to learn its blueprint. From there, crafting requires resources like chemicals, fibers, and chronotraces.
Your base is also highly customizable. If you manage to kill specific boss like monsters (Hellhounds) or (bizarre) weeping angel statues you can mount their heads on your walls as trophies. It gives a nice visual representation of your progress rather than just watching a number go up in a menu.
Despite the crazy multiverse setting, the gunplay is heavily grounded in reality. You have access to highly customizable military hardware. Weapons like the AK 12 offer incredibly smooth recoil control, especially when kitted out with the right foregrips and LPVO scopes. Meanwhile, heavy hitters like the AR 416 require a bit more effort to handle effectively at range.
One major thing to understand is the armor system. If you are expecting guaranteed one shot headshots because you brought a massive sniper rifle, you might be disappointed. Survival depends entirely on the specific tier of armor a player is wearing. Top tier gear, like the Altyn or SF Helm, provides massive damage reduction percentages. During testing, even a point blank headshot from a .50 caliber Barrett failed to drop a fully armored player in a single hit. You have to learn the time to kill for different weapon and armor matchups.
Instead of forcing players to pick a character with magical active abilities, the game uses a system called Body Sleeves.
These act as physical hosts you inhabit, and they only provide passive stat changes.
For example, a starter sleeve might give you extra inventory space and a massive reduction to your thermal signature, making it harder for snipers with heat scopes to spot you. Another sleeve might let you carry way more weight without stamina penalties, but heavily restricts your top sprinting speed. You pair these sleeves with an unlockable perk tree to fine tune your specific playstyle, whether you want to buff your healing speed or increase your bullet resistance.
Instead of giving you active powers, the perk tree is designed to work alongside the Body Sleeves system mentioned earlier. Since every Body Sleeve comes with distinct disadvantages like movement speed penalties or faster stamina drain you use the skill tree to offset those penalties or double down on your strengths. It is all about min-maxing your stats to fit your playstyle.
While the full extent of the skill tree is still being mapped out, here are a couple of concrete examples of how the perks alter your baseline stats:
- Bulletproof (Tier 2): This node grants an extra 3.8% raw bullet resistance. Because these perks stack with your baseline stats, a fully kitted character can easily walk into a raid with nearly 6% flat damage reduction before even factoring in the armor they are wearing.
- Heal Efficiency: Upgrading this node gives a flat 10% boost to the effectiveness of your medical supplies. If you pair this with a Body Sleeve that already has a natural healing buff, you can push your total healing effectiveness well over 35%, allowing you to recover from near-death states incredibly fast during a firefight.
A huge selling point for players who hate the anxiety of extraction games is the isolated raid feature. If you don't want to fight a squad or rats players (there is two mods solo and squad you can still play duo or trio but only against squads), you can choose a PvE only map. You still have to deal with the deadly environment and terrifying AI monsters, but you won't get sniped in the back by someone camping an extraction point.
For the competitive crowd, the game features Solo, Duo, Trio, and full Squad matchmaking, complete with an autofill option if your friends are offline. There is also a dedicated team deathmatch mode called Hired Ops
for when you just want to practice your aim without risking your hard earned stash.
- Isolated PvE Mode: Perfect for players who just want to loot and fight monsters without the stress of PvP.
- Deep Customization: The weapon modding is fantastic, and customizing your Shelter with monster trophies is highly rewarding.
- Body Sleeves System: Passive class building creates unique playstyles without resorting to annoying "ultimate abilities".
- Grounded Gunplay: The contrast between normal military weapons and crazy sci fi environments feels incredibly cool.
- Bullet Sponge Helmets: High tier helmets absorbing .50 cal sniper shots to the face feels unrealistic and frustrating.
- Crafting Bottlenecks: The Replicator system limits how many items you can build before enforcing arbitrary cooldown timers.
- Useless Weapons: Some weapons, like the crossbow, are currently terrible and virtually pointless to bring into a fight.
"A highly engaging tactical shooter that successfully blends hardcore looting mechanics with a terrifying sci fi setting. Accessible for solo players, but deep enough for hardcore squads."
