When it comes to shooting up waves of enemies with friends, gamers have an embarrassment of riches. That’s especially true with the relatively recent advent of roguelite shooters that arm you with a load of neat powers and weapons that combo together in powerful ways.
“Abyssus” stands out in that field, delivering a tight, fast-paced and satisfying adventure through mysterious undersea ruins as diving suit-clad Brinehunters. Hand-crafted levels, clever boss fights and impactful abilities make it one of the more joyful shooters to play and master — the only problem is that it’s a little shallow.
The basic gameplay loop of “Abyssus” will see you and up to three other players descend into the depths of a mysterious lost civilization broken up over three distinct zones, which are each capped off with a challenging boss. Complete all three, and there’s an extra-challenging final boss waiting for you to beat, but die along the way, and it’s back to camp.
You’ll proceed through each zone by clearing rooms of enemies and completing the occasional odd job, like destroying hidden objects or staying in certain areas to charge up towers. Along the way, you’ll get access to powerful blessing abilities that radically change how each run plays out, with powers like frost, electricity and barrel-throwing tentacles to empower your gun’s main and secondary fire modes as well as a secondary ability.
Building the right combination of abilities is the key to success — I really liked combining frost with shadows or lightning on the shotgun or disc launcher to ensure I’m freezing the most enemies possible — but choose wrong, and it’ll feel like you’re armed with a pop gun.
As is the style with roguelite shooters, each death is just an opportunity to start a new run and try out something fresh. While your blessings and upgrades will start from scratch, there’s an ability grid where you can unlock permanent upgrades as well as additional tweaks for runs, like additional health altars and chances to re-roll your blessings.
There’s also a fair bit of secrets, hidden rooms and unlocks sprinkled throughout the levels for the eagle-eyed players to find, which include a fun armory of unlockable weapons and cosmetics for your character.
“Abyssus” has some seriously great bones as a roguelite shooter — especially the creatively designed bosses that require quick thinking and a bit of strategy to beat — that makes it stand above many other entries into the genre, yet where it excels in quality, it really lacks quantity.
With runs that last between 30 and 45 minutes, the three zones and their enemies start to get a little stale by the three-dozenth run. Thankfully, there’s at least a little bit of variation with the zone bosses after you clear them. Still, I wish that instead of the three predetermined zones, there were a bigger pool of areas that the game could draw from, and it would be nice to see special rooms thrown into the mix.
There is a depth system where you can increase the difficulty of the game and add on additional multipliers, but the vast majority of them seem to be aimed at inflicting the maximum amount of pain on the player rather than mixing up the gameplay in fresh and exciting ways. They’re not really reasons to keep playing once you’ve cleared the final boss.
But, frankly, my disappointment with the game’s overall depth speaks strongly to just how good its fundamentals are. “Abyssus” gets so much right, I just wish there was more.
Luckily, the developer has been adding more content to the game in recent months, so there’s always hope that it could change. But until then, it’s off to find another roguelite shooter to jam with friends.
About the game
- Game: Abyssus
- Rating: ★★★★☆
- Platforms: PC
- Price: $25
- Release Date: Aug. 12, 2025
- Internet: Required for multiplayer, I had no lag problems playing online.