Here’s a list of all the ways we died during our hands-on time with The Callisto Protocol

I have already spoken at length about The Callisto ProtocolThe so-called ‘killer desserts’. Like the game’s predecessor, Dead Space, The Callisto Protocol will delight in seeing its protagonist, doomed pilot Jacob Lee, get butchered at every available opportunity.

In fact, it seems that Geln Schofield (co-creator of Dead Space and head of Striking Distance Studios) is more eager to punish players for failing to keep Jacob alive. Or reward them for dying, if you want to see it that way. Since the game even gives you an achievement for finding every way to die in the game, it’s clear that the developer wants you to really commit to all these brutal endpoints to the prisoner’s life.

The game is difficult. So dying will happen a lot; you really have to learn how to fight, how to dodge threats, how to avoid environmental hazards, how to get out of this isolated, icy prison in one piece. So all the kills are well placed and actually have a good intention behind them. “Look, you’re going to die,” Mark James, Schofield’s second-hand man and technical director of Striking Distance, told me in an interview. “So we can entertain you while you die, right?”

Initially, I thought this might have just been PR jargon: augmenting a feature that was present but not that big of a deal in the game itself. I was wrong. After about 60 minutes into the game (you can read my full preview of The Callisto Protocol at the link), I died in seven very different ways – that’s more than one unique death every 10 minutes. And he wasn’t even trying to die. That just happened. I bet if I tried to find more, they’d be out there.

So, to celebrate this fixation on all things hyper-creepy, I’ve listed every awkward ending for your reading pleasure. Here it goes.

Murder Dessert 1: The tentacles gouge out your eyes

At the beginning of the level, I came face to face with one of our fellow mutant interns. I couldn’t dodge one of his attacks in time and he caught me, but since he had already damaged it, he had started to evolve. This means tentacles. And these tentacles found Jacob’s face, and went into his eye socket. You can imagine what happens next.

Murder Dessert 2: Face sunk by the fists

One of the enemies in the game is a particularly pissed off thug, a large Brute-type enemy. You know the archetype. This absolute heifer of a unit took more health from me than I thought in one hit, and she proceeded to hold Jacob’s face with one hand and grind his skull to pulp with the other. At one point you could see the collapse of his bone. Hmm.

Murder Dessert 3: Face cut in half by a single enemy hit

Next, a faster enemy. Again, you know the horror tropes; this one was smoother, sure, but also leaner, faster, and meaner. This one lunged at me after the aforementioned brute knocked me down. Unbalanced and out of health, a clean hit ripped Jacob’s face off in one fell swoop. You see it slide a bit before the screen goes black.

Killer Dessert 4: Headless

The only things I have in my notes for this one are “the whole head came off” and “he basically took off his gloves”. This is all you need to know.

Murder Dessert 5: Broken Neck

One of the alien mutants that can camouflage themselves was responsible for this one. I thought I had cleared a room of all threats and foolishly went to operate a lever. Stupid mistake: this thing falls behind me and snaps my neck like a young chicken. The sound was deep, but sharp, as if you could feel it through your own bones.

Murder Dessert 6: Arm torn off

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this one in another game at some point, but that’s more of a good reference than anything else. One of the skinny, nasty enemies got the better of me when I tried to dodge to the side, so he broke through my defenses and tore off my exposed arm. He looked like he was about to punch me before the screen went blank.

Murder Dessert 7: Crashed into a turbine

This is exactly what it says on the tin. At one point, we slipped through a gate (this is a Glen Schofield game, after all) and I intentionally pushed Jacob into one of the sharp, jagged pieces of iron sticking out of the ground. As expected, his body split in half in a mixture of blood and viscera. This is where my demo ended, leaving a handsome taste in my mouth.

Callisto Protocol is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on December 2.