Abyss Veil

This game is ugly, the writing is similar to that of a 2013 forum post, the art is like a flash game project, and its ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ PEAK. This game is a good shooter with an interesting vibe and asthetic that would be totally comprimised if it wasn't exactly what it is. Its like an indie arthouse film but a video game and I literally wouldn't change anything about it.

Abyss Veil is a very low budget, story driven indie first person shooter made, as I understand, almost entirely by a single person. Which, for better or worse, shows. Abyss Veil's models and environments look like they predate Quake, the art in its visual novel style story sequences invoke MS Paint, it's dialogue is filled to the brim with contemporary teenage slang and, not to put too fine a point on it, typos, and its sound mixing is messy at the best of times. Abyss Veil also brought me a great deal of, thoroughly unironic, joy. Maybe it's because I'm at a point in my life where this sort of thing, a crude, borderline inscrutable passion project that feels like it was made by a single, likely queer, teenage weeb in their mom's basement (if that description is too far off the mark, or hits too close to home, I apologize) is just about the only kind of media that's still relatable to me. But this game is actually extremely fascinating. So, the story, as far as I could follow it, goes: It's the future and there is a war between Earth, a monarchy and Mars, its former colony, a Republic. Our primary protagonist is a Martian girl named Ivy Emberley, member of an elite military unit called the Whitehounds, carrying out a special mission on an island archipelago on Earth that eventually unfolds into a grand journey that dabbles, with varying degrees of success, in psychological horror, political drama, mecha anime, conspiracy thriller and coming of age story, occasionally switches perspectives to other characters, like Ivy's senior comrade Billy or former childhood friend Issa (Who, you see, is now a member of a mech piloting mercenary outfit hired to track down and eliminate the Whitehounds) and all the way throughout maintains its chuuni anime edgelord look and writing. Easy as it is to make fun of, there's a surprisingly competent game behind all of this. Abyss Veil is mostly a first person shooter, if one that occasionally plays with genre shifts. Its actual combat loop feels surprisingly similar to a Soldier of Fortune game. Mind, I said "feels", not "looks", it doesn't have the crunchy gore or anything, but gunplay and movement are very reminiscent of it. There's a small but well implemented variety of weapons (An Assault Rifle, a Shotgun, a Sniper Rifle and a Rocket Launcher) and the same can be said for its enemy variety. The design does offer a good bit of visual variety, simplistic and lacking in environmental details as it is and tends to reward exploration. You'll fight your way through tropical cities, jungles, snowy wastelands and a couple rather more abstract spaces. See, what makes Abyss Veil fascinating is that, beyond its crude presentation and dinergoth ass writing, is a surprisingly ambitious and surprisingly well executed game that doesn't quite feel like anything else in the indie shooter sphere and, honestly, punches way above its weight class. As crude as its prose and visual direction seem at first glance, every once in a while it manages to leverage its angst laden dialogue for a genuinely resonant character moment. Manages to leverage its low poly artstyle for a genuinely painterly, Signalis-esque vista. Manages to get some genuinely visceral imagery out of its amateur webcomic artwork. And manages to provoke some genuine intrigue with its anime fanfiction writing and world building. I'll say it, Abyss Veil's awesome. It's a game that has no right being as compelling as it is, but this game is doing its own thing, even if its resources are limited, and commits to it hard enough to make it work. This is some absolute, unapologetic yeen-core, made entirely because one person had an overly specific vision and wanted to build a game around it, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Because someone came up with that world and these characters and that story and wanted to share them with the world. It's just a delightfully earnest project that somehow actually comes together as an enjoyable game. Would also make for a great double feature with Studio System: Guardian Angel, for whatever that's worth. Ling story short, this was really a positive surprise for me.

To preface, I didn't realize this was an early access title when I bought it. At the time of writing, the game is roughly 1/4 complete. It hurts me to not recommend this game. It feels like a TON of heart and effort has been put into it, and I really hope the dev sticks with it. It has SO much potential, especially from a story perspective. I love the characters. They're all extremely well rounded. At points you start to wonder who the "bad guys" really are, which I think is a quality of great writing. The game is ultimately dragged down by simplistic gameplay, extreme difficulty spikes, and excessive padding. The prologue was over in less than 1 hour, but then more than 5 hours later I was STILL in chapter 1. The difficulty skyrockets in the latter half of chapter 1, and by the 6th hour of gameplay I just wanted it to be over. It looks like many people felt the same way, because while 50% of players have the achievement for beating the prologue, only 11% of players have played until the end of chapter 1. I think this could be something extremely special if development goes in the right direction. It just needs the kinks ironed out, like better pacing and rebalanced difficulty.

You can feel the passion this developer has put into this game. The art isn't incredible from a technical standpoint, but it's good enough to do the job of getting ideas across, and I love that. In this age where people are whining about needing gen AI to make art, this game is a shining example that's never been true. [b]Art doesn't need to be flashy to be meaningful.[/b] [h2] Prologue [/h2] The Prologue slaps hard. While the framing device is a bit of a drag, once you get through that, the game really picks up with interesting imagery and a dense world to unpack. The gameplay switches between Visual Novel to Survival Horror to FPS. Your mileage on the VN portion will depend on how much you enjoy reading, the Survival Horror is very light, more fixed camera angle walking sim usually, and the FPS game play is very fun, seems inspired by FEAR, though there are difficulty spikes as the game goes on. When the credits rolled around hour 2, I was a little disappointed with how short it ended up being. The gunplay was fun enough I figured they could at least get a few more levels out of it. And the story arc of the prologue was interesting, but it felt like there was way more to it. To my joy, I discovered the game wasn't over! I just finished the first piece. [h2] Chapter 1 [/h2] Chapter 1 is significantly bigger than the Prologue. It's great in the sense that I wanted more, I got more, but I noticed the game was slowly becoming more challenging, and there were times where it went from fun to frustrating. I'll start that I'm glad the game does give you full health on respawn, and you get a check point for every new level loaded. The core issue is the size of some maps and the limited resources on those maps. The gunplay seems designed for close quarters, tight angles, lots of obstacles, but at some point the game starts using these wide open maps where your sight is limited by fog, and it feels like the enemies can see a little further than that. So you'll be walking, hear a solider get alerted, and suddenly see bullets flying from the mist. Even if you manage to react, you've probably taken damage cause bullets are fast. They're not hit scan weapons for the sake of the slomo ability, but you're not dodging them with out that. And that health drain adds up, so you'll be in the final stretch of a level, and a guy will pop out and gank you, making you repeat the entire level again. It gets to a point where you feel like you can only make it through a level once you've learned all the enemy spawns, where all the health kits and ammo are, etc. A war of attrition. Where the Prologue was very linear, this Chapter starts linear, then returns you to the framing device where you can pick and choose which memories you want to see. Until you complete all of those? Or maybe just do the last one, uncertain, I did them chronologically. Anyhow, once you finish the more open section of game, you're put back on the rails for a good long while until you manage to "complete" the big mission it's all be leading up to. When the credits rolled for Chapter 1 at the 9 hour mark, I was a little more weary. Ready for the ride to be over, but this end certainly feels like an Act 2 ending, technically resolved, but mostly building to Act 3. [h2] Chapter 2-4? [/h2] Unfortunately not complete yet. I am curious where the Story will go from here. [h2] Worth It In Early Access? [/h2] Oh absolutely. This is a Haunted PS1 ass game if I ever saw one. It speaks to me. It's raw. I'd say so far each section has felt "complete". You're left with plenty of questions for the next part, but I think what you do get is satisfying enough to chew on. [h2] What Could Improve? [/h2] My biggest critique with the game right now is mostly balancing issues on a handful of levels, specially during the back half of the game. An abundance of health and ammo drops on the bigger maps would be nice, or maybe a difficulty setting so you don't drop after a few shots. Also f*ck the Drones that shoot rockets. Out of all the enemies, they're the ones that are not fun to fight at all. In general, the smoke from explosives is really annoying because of how opaque it is. Some of the levels have what I can only describe as a muddy look. The game does use lighting here and there, specially to help guide you, but sometimes everything is flat and a strain to look at. The jungle was the worst for this. Specially cause the soldiers in that section are green and blend in with the environments. Would love to see more weapons added and more enemy variants with different patterns and strategies to shake up game play more. Obviously being EA, everything is subject to change. I'll certainly be keeping an eye on this as new Chapters drop and will update this review accordingly. Written for the [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45463802-Haunted-PS1/]Haunted PS1 Curator Group[/url]

I LOVE KILLING PEOPLE. I FEEL VALIDATED. I FEEL LIKE I BELONG HERE. THE PAY IS GOOD.

Best ♥♥♥♥ ive played in awhile, keep me hooked cant wait for the next chapters the trailer for the game hooked me way before i bought it, i need as longer ver of the song

In the beginning i wasn't sure if this would stick with me, considering it was really hard to figure out what kind of game this was going to be. It mixed fps, visual novel and fixed camera angle survival horror in the first sections. It grew on me though, It's interesting to explore. Gave me weirdcore anime metal gear vibes.

i'd like to believe that the whitehounds would've loved taco bell

Don't let the "poorly" hand drawn art (It's peak and enhances the overall look of the game) and blocky graphics fool you, this game is peak. Story is captivating, you want to know more and more and VN looking segments of the game greatly works as a storytelling element. Gun play is surprisingly awesome, guns feel good most of the time and enemies are not just dumb statues, they roll, they jump away and try to escape your bullets to the best of their abilities. And it's not just FPS, oh no... Game actually changes its genres from time to time (No spoilers here because it's kinda peak... If you are familiar with the some old school games you will have fun.). As of now Prologue and Chapter 1 already makes up 7-10 hours of gameplay, all of that for such a cheap price? Yummy! Game is not without flaws of course but do remember that it's currently in the early access so everything is subject to change. From what I have gathered there are UI bugs that irritate quite a bit, no upgrades for additional guns (There is tons of money left unused by the end of Chapter 1...), difficulty spikes at some point but once you figure them out for the first time they don't really feel hard anymore. Also AI is a bit unfair and can spot you from infinite range if they are looking at your side (It makes hard to use sniper rifle at some points of the game, you can't peek reliably all the times to ensure swift eliminations of enemies.), speaking of sniper rifle, it felt really weird because sensitivity of the game feels strange ( I needed to drop it to 0.15-20, otherwise it's hard as hell to do headshots.). Also there are forced cutscenes that will force you to another stage (it was bad only once though, in the city I wanted to explore a bit but because of the bug where if you hold the movement key while starting a dialogue with someone game will remember the pressed buttons and will keep moving you will dialogues goes on), watch out for the red light. And perhaps my biggest itch is that you can't skip majority of dialogues, probably for a good reason but I read them fast and sometimes it feels like they drag on for a long time. Finally game is full of Gen Z slang (I think it's Gen Z?) and it might feel very immature, was not a problem to me. Review was written during v1.7

You'll understand My Bloody Christmas one day. I promise.