Abyssus

77 hours in, and I'm still figuring this game out. I mean that as a compliment. Abyssus is a roguelite shooter. You dive, fight through rooms, choose blessings, upgrade your build, fight bosses, finish the expedition, and do it again. Eventually, you're going to see the pattern. But every roguelite eventually becomes a pattern. I grew up dungeon crawling in Diablo III and IV for countless hours trying to get the run or finally put together the build. Even games with that kind of budget and amount of content eventually become familiar after you've played them enough. So the question isn't whether a roguelite eventually becomes repetitive. It's how many times can you twist the fates? That's where Abyssus shines. The loadout system is probably my favorite part of the game. The weapons actually feel different from one another, and I'm not forced to pick something I don't particularly like just because I know it'll eventually upgrade into the weapon I actually want. I'm satisfied with my choice before I even go into the Brine. From there, weapon mods, abilities, charms and blessings turn that choice into something completely different. The blessing system can be overwhelming at first. There are numbers everywhere, effects interacting, and sometimes you're wondering why you suddenly do an absurd amount of damage. Or why you suddenly don't. But it's easy to learn and hard to master. Anybody can look at a blessing, think "that sounds good," and take it. Eventually, you start understanding how blessings connect with whatever you're trying to accomplish: DoT, burst damage, survivability, status effects, weakspots, etc. Then the game gives you a terrible altar. I've had plenty of runs where I'm trying to build something specific (Pot of Gold has personally tortured me enough times) and the RNG refuses to cooperate. Earlier on, that can feel like the game ruined your build. Later, you realize making the bad roll work is part of the build. Choosing blessings eventually starts feeling a little like playing chess against the RNG. You know what you're trying to accomplish, but you don't control what the game puts in front of you. You adapt, recognize patterns, and work with what you're given. That interconnectedness carries into the combat. Weakspot hits can trigger your blessings. Melee can eventually execute enemies below 20% health, which feels fantastic when a big enemy just won't die. And then there are the abilities. You're throwing an anchor at things. There's a cube that shoots lasers. There's a spear, a turret, a grenade, and a brine field, and they all bring something different to a build. Especially when pushing Depth 50+, my ability becomes one of the most important pieces of what I'm building. Co-op opens everything up even further. More status effects, more procs and more opportunities for builds to interact instead of relying entirely on your own setup. Plus, there's the completely unnecessary but extremely important competition between friends over who did the most damage. The cooperative progression deserves credit too. Players can share charms, and one player's key opens the reward for everyone. Small decisions like that make playing together feel genuinely cooperative. I haven't played public co-op yet, so I can't fairly review matchmaking. I've seen complaints about hosts going AFK all the time, but personally I'd consider that a player issue rather than something I can blame on the game. After your initial progression, the Deep Water system lets you decide how miserable you'd like your next expedition to be. I like that the difficulty is ultimately yours to tune, while the actual difficulty of the dive still depends heavily on how well you build through it all. I do wish the riskier modifiers offered more gameplay rewards rather than mostly working toward cosmetics. Give me a rerollable blessing upgrade altar, increased drops, i don't know—something that makes me want to take the risk. Right? And that's really my biggest criticism after 77+ hours: I want more Abyssus. More weapons, abilities, areas, skins and ways to expand the blessing system. I'd especially love another step in the blessing tree. Minor Blessing → Major Blessing → maybe some kind of Superior or Universal Blessing deeper into the tree (similar to the universal upgrades in the Ancient Forge). One additional weapon or ability could create tons of new builds just through its interactions with everything already here. After 77 hours, I'm still experimenting. There's something satisfying about spending two hours in the depths, seeing that post-expedition stat screen and knowing I built that. Right now, my goal is Depth 100 solo at Deep Water Level 30. I'm getting closer, but that's Abyssus. It's trial and error until one interaction finally clicks and you start looking at the entire game differently. So if you're new, my recommendation is to stop worrying about making the perfect build. Grab a gun because it looks fun. Pick an ability that catches your eye. Take blessings that sound interesting. Mix things together. Make questionable decisions. Let some of them fail. Be willing to build badly before you learn how to build well. The optimization will still be there. After 77 hours, I'm still learning. Still diving.

its great to play with someone

roguelite? fps? say no more fam. it's well made and balanced. fun to speedrun

PRETTY FUN TBH

First impression: it's great! Very pretty. But please make the shotgun automatic by default. Should be semi-auto as fast as you can click or automatic, anything in between just feels awkward. Sincerely, a shotgun lover </3

pretty good but Unreal Engine decides to crash every second run :)