At the release of Code Violet on 8 January 2026, Push Square released a negative review of the game calling it an unfulfilled artistic vision that never completed its launch and criticizing its combat and tonal disintegration in a few hours after its release.
With a hundred plus critiques of Push Square under his belt and published since 2016, reviewer on Meta Critic calls it a six-hour affair that is better spent with Jurassic Park.
Wild Plot Unravels Fast
The protagonist Violet is first shown in an undressed state at an orbital research station of the 25th century when velociraptor predators attack her companion and thus forcing her to embark on a mad scan to find clothes, weapons, and plot explanations in the dinosaur-infested corridors.
The plot is a juxtaposition between serious voice acting with a light collection of space dinosaurs, a strategy to which the reviewer refers through an analogy to the role of Michael Keaton in Batman of the 1960s.
The gameplay is characterized by elementary puzzles, keycard retrieval missions and overt lack of a quest log, which help create the impression of monotony.
The only types of enemies are velociraptors, compys (capybaras), and dilophosaurid reptiles, who are based on established cinematographic tropes.
Combat and Tech Disappointment
The third-person shooting features are implemented as weightless, and the sound of a shotgun firing a bullet can be compared to the sound of a wrapping of the straw, and the hitboxes are not trustworthy and the feedback is not reflected immediately when the target collapses.
Glitches lead to instant player paralysis, freezing of the controllers and clashing of the camera with the environmental geometry and making navigation a contributor of frustration.
The character of Violent has very little reactive animation to attacks showing only a health bar on an arm-band. The visual elements glitch in the barren exterior society of floating islands, but about 90% of the action is limited to dark, monotonous halls, where the animation is accented all the more by the hairs that people wear.
Grim Outlook Ahead
The specified shortcomings in gunplay and software stability are an indicator of a harsh road; either developers will have to redesign the fundamentals of the game entirely to make it viable or the title will become a mere pointless oblivion.
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About the Author
Warisha Rashid writes about the intersection of corporate strategy, venture capital, and macro for TECHi — why certain acquisitions close when the Fed pivots, why a Series C prices at a markdown, and how capital rotation reshapes competitive positioning. She reads PitchBook, CB Insights, and S&P Capital IQ filings alongside the earnings commentary most coverage ignores. Her work focuses on M&A rationale, startup unit economics, and the policy signals that move private markets before they show up in public ones.
