There are plenty of unpleasant places to call home, but an enormous concrete residential complex where the walls seem to stretch endlessly, the authorities are watching your every move, and a deadly purple mist can sweep through the corridors at any moment has to rank fairly high on the list. Welcome to Gigastructure, a world where survival is less about building a brighter future and more about making it through another day without being killed by something lurking outside your door. It is a bleak, claustrophobic setting, yet one with an unmistakable appeal for anyone who enjoys their science fiction served with a generous helping of horror and dark humour.
Choice of Life: Samosbor sees Potata Company and Blazing Planet Studio return to their established card-based narrative formula, this time transporting players into the grim universe of Gigastructure. The premise is wonderfully oppressive. You live inside a seemingly endless residential mega-structure, surrounded by grey concrete, suspicious neighbours, and an authoritarian system that has little interest in your personal wellbeing. When your residential block is isolated in the search for a mysterious object, the already uncomfortable existence becomes considerably more dangerous. It is an intriguing foundation for a survival adventure, and the developers make good use of the setting to create a world where even the most ordinary decisions can carry frightening consequences.
Welcome to Gigastructure
The first thing that makes Choice of Life: Samosbor stand out is its setting. There is something particularly unsettling about the idea of an entire society existing within an enormous residential structure, where concrete corridors and enclosed living spaces form the boundaries of everyday life. It is not the sort of post-apocalyptic world filled with wide-open wastelands and spectacular ruins. Instead, the horror comes from confinement, routine and the uncomfortable feeling that there is nowhere else to go.
The Gigastructure universe provides a distinctive backdrop for the story, drawing on a bleak industrial science-fiction aesthetic that feels both familiar and wonderfully strange. The residential blocks are more than just locations. They represent a society in which people have become accustomed to living under oppressive conditions, where isolation and uncertainty are part of the daily routine. The decision to focus on an ordinary resident trying to survive gives the setting a more personal dimension. Rather than being a powerful hero arriving to save the day, you are simply someone attempting to stay alive in a world that seems determined to make that difficult.
The narrative begins with the isolation of your block and the search for a secret object, setting in motion a series of increasingly unpredictable events. From there, the experience unfolds through a succession of encounters and decisions, with each choice potentially changing the direction of your story. It is a strong premise for the franchise’s familiar card-based approach because the uncertainty surrounding the world naturally lends itself to unexpected consequences. You never quite know whether the next decision will help secure another day of survival or bring everything crashing down.
Every Decision Could Be Your Last
At the heart of the gameplay is a straightforward card-swiping system. Encounters are presented through scenario cards, and players choose between available responses by swiping left or right. The simplicity makes it easy to understand, but the consequences can be anything but straightforward. Decisions affect key survival resources, including health, mental sanity, rations and equipment durability, meaning even a seemingly minor interaction can affect your ability to continue.
This creates an enjoyable balancing act. It is not enough to choose whichever response sounds most appealing in the moment. You need to consider what you can afford to lose and whether a particular decision might leave you dangerously short of something important later. A choice that seems generous could cost valuable supplies, while a more selfish response might preserve the resources needed to survive another encounter. There is an uncomfortable moral dimension to this, because the game places you in situations where doing what is right and doing what is necessary are not always the same thing.
The resource management also gives the narrative a welcome sense of urgency. Health and sanity are obvious concerns, but rations and equipment durability add further complications to the business of staying alive. You are constantly weighing immediate needs against the possibility of something worse waiting further down the corridor. That tension is particularly effective in a setting where danger can arrive without much warning and where the luxury of making mistakes is extremely limited.
When the Samosbor Sirens Sound
Naturally, the biggest threat in this world is the phenomenon known as Samosbor. When the sirens sound and the deadly purple mist begins to sweep through the residential floors, survival becomes a matter of preparation and quick thinking. The threat provides a recurring source of tension, transforming the familiar environment into something genuinely frightening. It is one thing to worry about food, equipment and hostile inhabitants, but quite another to know that a deadly atmospheric event could make your own home unsafe.
The preparations required to survive these events provide some of the game’s most compelling scenarios. Sealing blast doors, using makeshift gas masks and deciding whether to respond to desperate neighbours create uncomfortable dilemmas. Someone pounding on your door might genuinely need help, but opening it could put your own survival at risk. These are the kinds of situations that make the setting work so well, because they turn an abstract environmental threat into a series of personal decisions.
There is also an effective contrast between the relative simplicity of the card-based controls and the seriousness of the situations presented. A single swipe can determine whether you protect yourself, take a risk or potentially expose yourself to something lethal. That accessibility makes the game easy to pick up, but it does not remove the weight of its decisions. Indeed, the straightforward format can make the consequences feel even harsher because there is very little between you and the outcome of your choice.
Scavenging, Equipment and the Cost of Survival
Survival is not just about choosing the right responses. Exploring the concrete corridors also offers opportunities to find useful supplies, including scrap, filter replacements and makeshift weapons. These items can prove vital when dealing with the threats that inhabit the Gigastructure, and having the right equipment can unlock additional interaction possibilities. This gives players another reason to pay attention to what they discover, rather than treating every encounter as an isolated decision.
Equipment also helps connect the game’s exploration and survival systems. Finding something useful is only part of the challenge; understanding when it might make a difference is equally important. Certain items can influence how you approach violent mutant encounters or inspections by the floor commanders, creating alternative possibilities that might otherwise remain inaccessible. This adds a welcome strategic element to the card-based structure, as players need to think beyond the immediate choice and consider what they might need later.
The hostile inhabitants and mutant anomalies reinforce the sense that danger comes from several directions. The environment itself is threatening, but so are the people and creatures encountered along the way. The presence of authoritarian floor commanders introduces another layer of unease, suggesting that even when the Samosbor is not sweeping through the corridors, the authorities can still make everyday life miserable. It is a grim little world where nobody seems particularly interested in making life easier for anyone else.
Death Is Not Necessarily the End
As with other games built around branching decisions and survival, failure is an expected part of the experience. Choice of Life: Samosbor features numerous possible death states, some of which are likely to arise from poor decisions or unfortunate circumstances. Random card draws can also create frustrating situations, particularly when several punishing events occur in succession. There will inevitably be moments when you feel the odds have turned against you, even if you have been making relatively sensible decisions.
However, the inclusion of permanent legacy perks gives death a purpose beyond simply ending a run. Unlocking improvements can provide better starting conditions and introduce fresh narrative possibilities in subsequent attempts. This is an important part of the game’s replay structure, as it gives players something to work towards even when an expedition ends badly. Rather than feeling that every failed attempt has been completely wasted, there is an opportunity to carry something forward and approach the next run with a little more confidence.
It also encourages experimentation. With a nonlinear story and unpredictable consequences, discovering everything the game has to offer is unlikely to happen in a single attempt. Different choices can lead to different encounters, while alternative approaches may reveal paths that were previously inaccessible. The knowledge gained from failure becomes part of the appeal, although players who dislike trial and error may find some of the less forgiving outcomes frustrating.
A World Built From Concrete, Darkness and Dark Humour
The visual presentation is central to what makes Choice of Life: Samosbor so distinctive. Its hand-drawn 2D comic artwork captures the bleak industrial atmosphere of the Gigastructure universe, using cold concrete environments and oppressive surroundings to establish a suitably uncomfortable mood. There is a strong contrast between the ordinary architecture of the residential complex and the grotesque creatures and strange situations that emerge within it. The result is a world that feels recognisable enough to be unsettling, yet strange enough to keep players wondering what might happen next.
Character portraits also help bring the inhabitants to life. In a setting where people are trapped within an enormous and unforgiving structure, the personalities and reactions of those you encounter are important. The comic art style gives the characters an expressive quality that works particularly well alongside the game’s darkly humorous writing. It allows the developers to explore the absurdity of their dystopian world without losing sight of the underlying horror.
The audio design complements the artwork with an atmosphere built around industrial ambience, distant sirens and harsh mechanical sounds. These details help communicate the oppressive nature of the environment, making the Gigastructure feel like a place that is constantly operating around you, regardless of whether you are safe or in immediate danger. Radio chatter and other unsettling audio cues add to the sense of isolation, while the warning sirens provide an especially effective reminder that something terrible may be approaching.
The dark humour is another welcome part of the game’s identity. There is a fine line between making a grim setting amusing and undermining its atmosphere, but the combination of bleak circumstances and satirical writing feels appropriate for this particular universe. Sometimes the absurdity of the situations is almost as memorable as the danger itself. That contrast gives the narrative personality and helps prevent the experience from becoming relentlessly miserable.
Final Verdict
Choice of Life: Samosbor is an entertaining and atmospheric addition to the Choice of Life franchise, taking its familiar card-based decision-making and placing it in a particularly memorable science-fiction setting. The Gigastructure is an excellent foundation for a survival story, with its oppressive concrete surroundings, hostile inhabitants and the ever-present threat of Samosbor creating a world that feels genuinely uncomfortable to inhabit. Resource management gives individual decisions additional weight, while scavenging and equipment choices add useful strategic considerations to the experience.
There are some frustrations. The reliance on random card draws can occasionally produce punishing sequences, and finding the best way forward may involve several failed attempts. Players who prefer carefully controlled progression may find the unpredictability a little irritating, particularly when an otherwise promising run comes to an abrupt end. Nevertheless, the legacy perks and branching narrative provide good reasons to return, making failure feel like part of a larger process of discovery.
What ultimately makes Choice of Life: Samosbor work is its atmosphere and its understanding of what makes a survival narrative compelling. It is not simply about keeping your health and supplies above zero. It is about living in a world where the rules are oppressive, the people around you are desperate and even the walls of your home offer little protection. Potata Company and Blazing Planet Studio have created a distinctive setting for their card-based storytelling, and the combination of bleak science fiction, uncomfortable decisions and dark humour gives this adventure plenty of character. It may not always be fair, but in a place like Gigastructure, fairness was probably never part of the deal.
