Continuing the series' premise, the game features a cast of five playable protagonists and a multilinear narrative influenced by player choices.

Its decision-making scenes can significantly alter the trajectory of the plot and change the relationships between the main characters; some can lead to the permanent death of the protagonists.

Player control switches between the protagonists, crew of a colony ship called Cassiopeia, which crash lands on Tau Ceti f, a planet that is 12 light-years from Earth.

It is a "multifunctional utility strap that your character wears on their wrist" which controls as shoulder mounted flashlight, a scanner "for detecting electronics and remotely activating systems", a messenger which "lets you communicate and strategize with your crewmates from afar" when your trying to stay under the radar of enemies, and something called a "wedge tool" which is made for opening doors, but can as a last resort be used as a weapon to temporary stun aliens "giving you the chance to slip away and evade death".

[8] The game stars Lashana Lynch as Brianna Young, an astronaut and pilot of a colony ship called Cassiopeia that crash lands on Tau Ceti f, a planet that is 12 light-years away after setting out to look for a new home to save humanity due to Earth being in the process of dying.

[9][10] Doyle stated that the game also takes inspiration from other sci-fi horror films including Solaris (1972), Alien (1979), Event Horizon (1997), Pandorum (2009), Prometheus (2012), Life (2017), and Sputnik (2020).

Their mission is to test every procedure onboard without ever touching down on the planet they’ve been sent to orbit...The crew awakens from their four-year hyper sleep to a hull breach, a murder, and some extremely suspicious crew activity – all of which culminates in the ship crash landing on the planet...the ship is infected with an alien organism.

[14][better source needed] Directive 8020 was first revealed in a post-credits teaser trailer at the end of The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me,[15][16] which was released on 18 November 2022.