Taking place in the 21st century, the game follows a government agent dispatched to a research station in orbit around Saturn's moon, Titan, to learn why the scientists there abruptly cut off communication with Earth.

Hawking's mission is to make contact with the members of Project Firestart, an initiative of the System Science Foundation, who have recently dropped out of communication with their superiors on Earth.

Hawking is further instructed to retrieve all of the scientific data on board the Prometheus and then to destroy the ship, based on the USS' belief that Project Firestart has been compromised and could potentially pose a threat to Earth.

Hawking further learns that one of the scientists on the project, Dr. Arno, secretly altered the DNA of the mining creatures in an attempt to create a race of super soldiers.

Escaping on the shuttle without sending an SOS distress call or informing HQ of the Exis's destruction results in the craft drifting through space.

Some of the terminals throughout the space station contain logs and journals of the personnel, which provide a history of the genetic project and thus the backstory - a revolutionary feature in 1989, which has become very common in modern videogames.

The famous videogame magazine Zzap!64 rated the game 91%, with the following comment: "Project Firestart is jam-packed with the sort of fast-paced, polished presentation and chilling atmosphere which make software epics.".

[4] IGN has called it the first "fully formed vision of survival horror as we know it today," citing its balance of action and adventure, limited ammunition, weak weaponry, vulnerable main character, feeling of isolation, storytelling through journals, graphic violence, open exploration, cut-scenes, multiple endings and use of dynamically triggered music—all of which were characteristic elements of later games in the survival horror genre.