Abyssus
Preview
Power To The Treasure Hunters
by Jordan Helsley
previewed on PC
The Speed of Combat
Hop into a game of Abyssus and one thing becomes immediately clear: you are fast. Illogically so. Something about our friends in full copper and brass diving gear skating around like they were in an old-school arena shooter took a little extra time to get used to, which increased the learning curve a bit. It was a necessary lesson, though, and I'm glad I learned it early. The game is designed around this mobility, much like its isometric brethren. On top of the base movement speed is a generous double jump and a lightning-fast dash, all of which are shown effectively in the opening tutorial. It isn't until the first couple of combat encounters that the necessity of these skills becomes clear. Enemies are quick, they love AOE attacks, many of which come with the standard "beware of this area" red markers pre-damage, and they can absolutely swarm the players. These encounters are also designed, devilishly, to keep the players' eyes anywhere but where you want them. Often this comes in the way of flying enemies, which are plentiful, to keep your eyes up hoping you stumble into some burning ring of fire or get sideswiped by a strong melee enemy. Other times this comes in layered attacks, with a large bruiser jumping at you from a great distance, spawning a damage wave that isn't entirely consistent, while you take ranged shots from above, ground level, and other melee troops that love to get in from behind. I wouldn't describe the standard encounters in this build as difficult, but it's easy to see how they get there.
The big selling point is the weapons, of which there will be eight. Of these eight, I could experiment with three, including several primary and secondary mods, which is where the meat of the meal is. Everyone starts with the Engine Rifle, which is a fairly standard assault rifle with a secondary fire that empties the magazine quicker at the cost of overheating. There's some neat design to this weapon, both visually and mechanically, that leaves me curious about what the future might hold for other announced and potential weaponry. So, Abyssus is a game without ammo. There are no mad-dashes for pickups in the middle of a fight, rather careful management of reload timers. The primary fire of the Engine Rifle reloads like any other gun you've ever seen, but the secondary fire is only restricted by overheating: it doesn't even use ammo. No matter what, when the primary magazine is dry it will need to be reloaded eventually, but feathering between the two modes to extend combat effectiveness felt great. I could eventually turn the primary fire into a slow-to-spin-up Gatling gun (with more rounds between reloads), and the secondary fire became a concentrated single-shot rifle that dealt increased damage. The other two weapons, the shotgun and the revolver (which I gleefully discovered at the end of a lengthy jumping puzzle in the hub area) had similar mods that can change play styles while also keeping the core of the weapon intact. Weapons lack punch, a problem I hope they address, but their capabilities remain fun for a time. The other standard part of the toolkit is your Ability (akin to equipment) which starts as three throwable grenades (again, on a cooldown) but the turret was also available. More on that later.
Combat Combos
The loop of Abyssus takes players through a series of rooms as they delve deeper and deeper. At the end of some of these rooms are Blessing Altars, and this is where the real fun begins. Blessings are elemental (or elemental inspired) passive bonuses that attach to one of your three attacks: primary fire, secondary fire, or abilities (sorry melee fighters, but the emergency melee is just that, but there appears to be at least one weapon for you in the cards). Because I was loving the turret, I kept focusing on choosing blessings that activated on ability damage. There's a significant variety of these, but I was a big fan of the whirlwind blessings, which triggered damaging whirlwind AOE fields at random just as my turret was firing away, while the blessings also increased its damage. These elements stack additional bonuses in relation to each other. The lightning blessings increase all critical damage, and the whirlwinds increase the area of all these elemental attacks. Combine those with some fire and you're cookin'. It’s easy to see how getting deep in a run can facilitate some truly wild builds.
Just like any roguelite, permanent upgrades are here, and they appear impactful too. From adding additional healing charges (very limited, scarce to start) to allowing upgrade benches to spawn in runs, there's some game-changing options at your fingertips. For me, things clicked powerfully when I unlocked an extra ability charge permanently, and upgraded my turret at a bench to allow me to sling five turrets in every room I entered. Yeah, I continued to focus on ability blessings when possible. This eventually made the preview run trivial, alone and with friends, but it showed its potential, if the game can keep up with its builds.
Shortfalls and Secrets
I enjoyed spending a significant amount of time with Abyssus. I think the environments are very well crafted visually, and the combat rooms were varied enough that every time I ran through one (they're randomly arranged, of course) I got a sense of what I was in for. They had a distinct lack of environmental variables, though. The movement abilities are not really utilized for positioning in the combat arenas, and features such as standing water don't even slow the player down to move through. The visuals are nice, but without unique elements, they all boil down to similar rooms with a different coat of paint. I hope that the variety in the future is up to keeping the visuals exciting, and that different environments offer novel experiences. I don't think that the enemies look as good as the settings, though. They match well-enough, fitting the sunken ruins aesthetic, but they don't hit the same way the rest of the art does. I only fought five of the game's 31 enemies, so there's plenty of room to be surprised, but the first impression left me slightly disappointed. My concern for the bosses is a little different, though. The game advertises four bosses, but this build only includes one. Now, I think this boss was a fun fight, though I did only die once, on my first solo run. The boss used attacks effectively taught during the lead-up to the fight, but with only three remaining bosses, I'm concerned about the variety of the ultimate bosses we'll fight dozens of times.
The largest question marks are whether the game will pull off the story that it's clearly invested in, and whether it will continue to use fun secrets. It is nice to see notes during runs that give backstory on the world. There's a cool archive in the hub area where you collect relics of defeated enemies and any artifacts you can recover. It's just impossible to say whether those elements will come together in a satisfying way. Likewise, with the secrets. Finding the revolver in the hub was fun, and there are hints to other, broader secrets, but a balance between engaging and far-too-vague can be difficult to pull off.
Go Deeper
Abyssus makes a powerful presence in several areas, particularly in how it allows the player to change how they engage with combat. It is tough to say whether the challenges that the game throws against those combat builds will offer sufficient resistance and engagement. With no apparent elemental resistances or specific bonuses, with no real environmental variables, it risks becoming bland once the player has the knowledge and power to become a true killing machine. There is a consumable item not present in the preview code that appears to, essentially, increase the starting difficulty, but there's no sign that this is anything beyond more enemies that hit harder. The early showing is enough to be at least a little excited about, but long-term success is far from guaranteed at this stage. We will have to wait and see if the further depths of these sunken ruins offer gameplay treasures along with collectable ones.
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