Every year, without fail, there are games that fall through the cracks. Maybe the marketing didn’t hit the intended audience or, as we’ve come to see in the last few years, too many games are released in the same, small window. Which means there are a lot of titles worthy of praise that are simply going unnoticed. This year, Lunar Abyss is one of those titles that should have been on more people’s lists, and even in more people’s play sessions.
So what exactly is Luna Abyss, apart from a game that you should be playing? It’s an ambitious, narrative-driven, first-person bullet hell platformer. If DOOM: The Dark Ages had a baby with Returnal, Luna Abyss would be that baby. Albeit one with some fantastic platforming and gameplay mechanic escalation.
Story and Setting
Set in the future, a strange, red Moon appears in the Earth’s night sky. Its sudden arrival plunges the world into chaos, pushing the planet to the brink. Humanity splits into two groups: those who chose to stay on a damaged world and try to bring the past back to life, or those who follow the All-Father Atticus to a new life on this new Moon. But the secrets it holds, such as where it came from, what it really is and what lurks within its dark interiors, may be more than man can handle.
You play as Fawkes, a prisoner on the new Moon serving out your sentence by doing the All Father’s dirty work. Two hundred years after humanity’s exodus to this Moon, things are far from well. Civilisation has fallen, and the cities are in disrepair. Those who couldn’t escape were transformed into monsters, while those who chose to leave their bodies behind in favour of bio-mechanical shells were left to be consumed by the Rot. Something is stirring within the Moon, and it wants out. . .
Combining a slice of Cosmic and trans-humanism horror, Luna Abyss sets its sights firmly on telling a heavy, character-driven story of mankind’s hubris in trying to control the uncontrollable, especially when you don’t really know what it is. As Fawkes, each mission you take on for the All Father reduces your sentence on the Moon. It starts off simply enough, scavenging for equipment, looking for other lost Scouts, but before long, you’re tasked with eliminating the All Father’s enemies. Can the All Father be trusted is just one of the game’s many questions.
And just what the Moon really is, along with where it came from and why it’s so huge and full of structures within, are many of the other questions the game throws at you. There are a variety of characters to meet who dole out enough information to flesh out the world, along with plenty of journals to find that flesh out the past even more.
World Design and Atmosphere
The game does its best world-building through the Moon itself. Internally, it’s a gargantuan structure full of mines, abandoned cities, prisons and power cores, a brutalist environment that looks as though it were roughly scraped out by a sculptors brush. There’s an entire world beneath the Luna surface and you’ll be running through depleted mines and sky-blue forests, sometimes within the same mission. Through it all is a cyclopean sense of scale and claustrophobia that impresses in equal measure, intending to give the feeling that the Moon itself may be alive.
Gameplay and Combat
Thankfully, all of that world-building is married to some fantastic gameplay. Luna Abyss is a bullet hell shooter through and through. Much like DOOM: The Dark Ages and Returnal, there’s going to be a variety of multi-coloured, orb-like energy attacks heading your way. Usually from multiple enemies at once. The game mixes up it’s combat between small, locked-in rooms and traditional corridor and open area shooting, all the while making sure that you have to stay on your toes while making use of every weapon and ability in your arsenal.
You’ve got four weapons in your arsenal which essentially amount to an assault rifle, shotgun, long range rifle and a really sweet rocket launcher that doles out multiple, anime-style barrages per shot. As they’re energy based, each weapon can overheat but are also great for specific situations and enemies. The shield-breaker shotgun, for instance, does just that, breaks blue coloured shields so you can get to the soft target beneath. Every encounter will have you swopping between weapons to effectively survive.
Platforming and Exploration
When you aren’t surviving a bullet hell onslaught, you’ll be exploring the megastructure for logs and platforming your way across the impressive, cyclopean environments. Usually I’m not a fan of platforming in FPS’s. Few games have gotten that right for me. And now Luna Abyss can be added to that list. The platforming isn’t just well thought out and meticulously put together, it’s also incredibly fun and tight.
Abilities and Progression
Both weapons and abilities are doled out slowly across the game. Eventually you’ll have access to a double jump, air dash and a brief shield. It’s a small arsenal to be sure, but they’re all so well integrated into the game design that I never felt like I was missing out on having more weapons or abilities at my disposal.
Which brings me to one of my favourite aspects of the games design; the mechanical escalation of abilities into all cores of the gameplay. Every aspect is slowly ramped up until you’re using all of your weapons and abilities across all of the games aspects. From gunning down enemies while making platforms beneath you to possessing enemies and then using them to sling you across large gaps before shooting open a shielded opening to air dash to safety. It’s really exhilarating.
Difficulty and Challenge
Luna Abyss presents mutiple difficulty settings, including a story mode that switches on GOD mode for you if that’s your jam. While it doesn’t reach the insane bullet hell heights of Returnal, Luna Abyss present a pretty good challenge at it’s default difficulty. Energy balls may not whizz at you at the speed of light, but there’s so much been flung at you at the same time that it will take all of your concentration to make it through the more difficult ones.
Another aspect that I like was the decision to remove health packs from the game and replace it with the ability to absorb enemies for health when they’re at death’s door. It adds another layer of thought to the fights in deciding whether or not to execute an enemy on it’s last legs or leave it until you need a swift infusion of health.
Final Verdict
Luna Abyss is one of those moments when a game becomes more than a pleasant surprise, it’s when a game becomes a complete joy to play. It has fantastic platforming and bullet hell inspired combat with an intriguing narrative. While not all of what’s happening in Luna Abyss is adequately explained, it’s a wonderful dive into a universe that I would love to see more off.
Luna Abyss Trailer
This review was based off a Xbox playthrough.
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The game was provided to us for the express purpose of reviewing.
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