As huge fans of co-op action games like Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, we weren’t sure what to expect from Abyssus. We liked the videos and we absolutely love the devs. DoubleMoose Games is the team behind the physics-driven fun of Just Die Already and Last Man Sitting. Those games are our jam, and seeing them make a sharp turn to a co-op, first-person roguelite shooter that’s set in a Skyrim/BioShock-like ruins gave us pause. After several amazing afternoons, we’re happy to say that this is their best title yet. Join us after the trailer jump to tell you why!
Drowning in Copper
The shooting mechanics are the best part about the game. We loved dropping into an underwater ruin filled with heavy copper pipes and dwarven artifacts. At times, it feels like a fast-paced version of a sci-fi Skyrim or an alternate BioShock universe. DoubleMoose really outdid themselves, both with the level design and the soundtrack. The sci-fi, mysterious, and meditative sound effects do wonders for the overall atmosphere. Then, the monsters rise to get you.
Standing still in Abyssus gets you killed. Quickly. The mobility suite pulls heavily from the arena shooter playbook, and it feels surprisingly tight. We get a snappy dash. A reliable double jump. There’s enough mid-air control to redirect our momentum right over a massive chasm. Every time we pulled the trigger on a heavy shotgun or the Brine Revolver, the feedback kicked back hard. It’s an amazing feeling and it seems fine-tuned to perfection.
The core loop stitches together over 70 hand-crafted rooms into a procedurally sequenced gauntlet. Clear the room. Grab your upgrade. Push deeper. Sounds simple, right? Yes, we thought that too at the beginning. And yet, we spent the first few hours feeling like we were fighting blizzards. You start with basic gear. One single heal. You’re fighting the exact same initial waves on repeat to grind out soul fragments for the Soul Wheel, which is like a tier-based system with permanent unlocks. These unlocks are meaningful and they help you a lot on your runs. You spend fragments to unlock more syringe usages, increase your chances to get better equipment, or get luckier in some aspects and more devastating in others. The progression drip-feed is painfully slow at the start.
Pushing past that wall changes the overall vibe.
Once we started unlocking the nine base weapons and stacking a few of the 54 weapon mods at the workbenches, the combat completely opened up to us. Each weapon has two firing modes. The first weapon we got, the engine rifle, has a primary fire that’s fully automatic. The secondary fire is stronger but overheats the weapon when not used in moderation. In that initial chaos, the first ability we picked up was the frag grenade. In between the rifle and the grenade, you can also use a fast melee weapon, a wrench, to stun enemies. Whenever panic overwhelmed us, the wrench was our go-to choice since it interrupts reloads and abilities, although it feels a bit unsatisfying and not heavy enough, especially when it makes a connection with the enemy.
Throughout the rooms, blessing altars will help you get that special oomph—a power that can be attached to your primary or secondary weapon mode, or to your equipped ability. Praying to the aspect of the surge, for example, may give you the aspect of fire, which is the power to set enemies on fire. In addition, it gives statistical boosts and effectiveness to the element. Another cool aspect is that choosing more blessings from the same aspect does additional empowering to the mechanic and it adds a passive boost, such as a greater area of effect or a better critical chance. Charms, on the other hand, grant additional statistical boosts in many areas, such as 25% more damage to enemies closer to you or 30% damage to enemies further away from you. If you don’t like a charm, you can melee kick it in its chops and it will grant you gold.
There are additional nuances connected to all of these aspects, but we’ll let you discover those for yourselves. It’s safe to say, however, that the system is well-thought-out and it successfully manages to make each run a lot more varied and interesting than the previous one.
There’s never a dull moment. Melting one of the 12 boss health bars with a fully kitted squad is absolute chaos. We found ourselves chaining the Aspect of Lightning between armored brutes, immediately swapping to a secondary fire mode to finish them off. You can’t just zone out. With 36 different enemy types, there’s a lot of variety. The enemies are quite unique and will test your reflexes with challenging attack patterns. When they crowd the room and start doing their thing, it’s very easy to lose yourself in the chaos and just pray and hope you hit a weak spot to bring the tankier ones down faster.
Seriously, the game loves to throw nasty combinations at us just to ruin a run. Add in over 140 Ancient Forge mods and 250 Charms and Blessings, and the build variety gets staggeringly huge. For even greater variety, certain rooms have objectives that grant you extra chests if successfully completed. Just to give you one example, if you strive to complete a trial without taking damage, you’ll have more rewards to reap. And yes, not paying attention to your surroundings and falling in a hole counts as taking damage. We learned that the hard way.
Patch 1.3: Dropping Anchor
Abyssus hit consoles on June 25th, and thanks to the wonderful people over at Cosmocover PR, we were able to check the PS5 version, right alongside the 1.3 update. The devs bolted a massive new biome onto the run generation. It’s this heavy-looking industrial zone packed with custom brinepunk machinery. It looks like nothing we’ve seen before, and it magically injects some much-needed visual variety. To make matters even better, they tossed in fresh enemies, including these hulking brine-monsters. A brand-new deity called the Brine God also dropped into the rotation with 15 new blessings. It’s a substantial update. After a week of sessions, we still feel we’ve barely scratched the surface.
The Final Pressure Check
With Abyssus, the devs built a really solid arena shooter. We’re giving it an 8/10, and we can only sing songs of praise about the tight mechanics and the massive build variety. Alone or with friends, this is a great game. It doesn’t require you to think. All you have to do is just let go and let your instincts take over. During these warm summer days and after a long day of work, that’s all we want.
- Developer: DoubleMoose Games
- Publisher: The Arcade Crew, Dotemu
- Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
- Release Date(s): August 12, 2025 (PC), June 25, 2026 (PS5/Xbox Series)
- Genre: Roguelite First-Person Shooter / Co-op Action
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