There have been extra souls-likes than I might muster the curiosity in at Summer season Sport Fest 2025. I’ve by no means been one to benefit from the style normally anyway, and seeing what number of video games had been leaning into gameplay loops of dodge-roll showdowns with gigantic, spongey bosses had me checked out at instances through the varied showcases over the previous week. However I performed one sport that borrows from the style and did not flip me away. End of Abyss takes a couple of touchstones from video games like Darkish Souls, ties it in with a Little-Nightmares-in-space aesthetic, and brings all of it collectively in a cleverly creepy twin-stick shooter.
Finish of Abyss comes from Part 9 Interactive, a brand new studio created partially by former Tarsier Studio builders, the crew behind Little Nightmares and its sequel. The Little Nightmares affect can positively be felt in Finish of Abyss. Although the enemy and world design are a lot completely different, buying and selling the stuff of childhood night time terrors for coldly blue-tinted isolation akin to a sci-fi horror story, there’s one thing about it that feels acquainted. Perhaps it is the anonymous, unvoiced character being chased by fleshy monsters. Or perhaps it is their brightly coloured jacket–here a lime inexperienced versus Little Nightmare’s yellow raincoat.
Fortunately, the protagonist in Finish of Abyss can defend themselves, in contrast to these in Tarsier’s video games. Utilizing a pistol with limitless ammo, or different discovered weapons like a shotgun I found in my play session, the sport’s twin-stick capturing felt well-implemented. It wasn’t very sticky, which I preferred, because it gave it an anxiety-inducing impact. Lacking photographs meant the enemies had been in a position to shut the space and triggered me to dodge them, both out of the room so I might create a bottleneck in a doorway, or simply catch my breath. Some enemies grew lengthy, giraffe-like necks, which they swung at me with sneakily far attain. Others got here in packs of a number of small bugs that may bounce on me, inflicting me to shake them off and ebook it, or attempt to knife them on their strategy.
The souls-like inspirations could be felt in a couple of methods some gamers might be accustomed to. For one, the map feels round in that satisfying approach From Software program and its lineage make the most of loads. Exploring each area felt key, because it allowed me to search out hidden caches of weapon or swimsuit improve supplies, however simply as necessary, I might unlock passageways that helped me loop again round to earlier areas.
As a result of the enemies respawn while you save at a mysterious sort of pod–not to be confused with a standard bonfire–these shortcuts helped evade the identical sequence of enemies every time I got here again to the realm to save lots of or improve my character. There are not any corpse runs, however the sport will punish you for failing to save lots of manually, so these shortcuts again to a protected haven might be important for survival.
I obtained to tackle an enormous boss monster too, which, regardless of its sizeable well being bar, did not show too difficult given my abundance of shotgun ammo I might crafted by then, however I count on this was a kindness afforded to me within the demo solely, and within the full sport, I might need to scramble a bit extra. The boss battle felt soulsy too, the place every hit devastated me, so I might solely afford to mess up only a few instances. I am hoping the sport can strike a pleasant stability between being difficult but not brutal, and co-creator Mattias Ottvall advised me that is the crew’s imaginative and prescient as properly.
From what I’ve performed thus far, the sport’s greatest attribute is its environment. There’s a chilling stillness to the world. Enemies typically stand round, and even appear to lie in wait, till you strategy them, generally sneak-attacking from behind a doorway or out of a shadow. This leaves you alone a lot of the time, not sure of what is round every nook. Your scanner gadget, which may find secret caches or puzzle areas, echoes by way of the ghostly halls of the alien world. I believe the sport will not care to reply many questions on the place and when the sport takes place, and I am completely completely satisfied to go alongside for that experience into the unknown.
It is not precisely a horror sport, Ottvall advised me, however the sport has inched nearer to that id throughout improvement as a result of its small crew featured largely artwork-focused builders. The mechanics of the sport naturally shifted to adapt to the art-driven sport. That was an attention-grabbing wrinkle for me to be taught, because it means that the sport might have regarded fairly completely different if the stability between gameplay designers and world designers was skewed the opposite approach. As a substitute, we obtained the icy-blue Finish of Abyss you may see within the trailer above, which is certainly extra up my alley than a demanding combat-first sport the devs might have as soon as been focusing on.
As somebody who loves Little Nightmares, enjoys twin-stick shooters, and does not take care of souls-likes, I really feel what I noticed thus far is sufficient of these first two components to permit me to not get annoyed by its third factor. Finish of Abyss appears to be the beginning of an intriguing new studio. It is coming to Epic Video games Retailer, Xbox Collection X|S, and PS5 in 2026.
