There have been extra souls-likes than I might muster the curiosity in at Summer time Recreation 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 occasions throughout the numerous 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 number 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 partly by former Tarsier Studio builders, the staff 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. Possibly 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 appreciated, because it gave it an anxiety-inducing impact. Lacking photographs meant the enemies had been in a position to shut the space and brought about 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 will leap on me, inflicting me to shake them off and guide it, or attempt to knife them on their strategy.
The souls-like inspirations will be felt in a number of methods some gamers will probably be aware of. For one, the map feels round in that satisfying method From Software program and its lineage make the most of quite a bit. Exploring each house felt key, because it allowed me to seek out hidden caches of weapon or go well with 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 if 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 world to save lots of or improve my character. There aren’t any corpse runs, however the sport will punish you for failing to save lots of manually, so these shortcuts again to a secure haven will probably be very important for survival.
I received 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 would crafted by then, however I count on this was a kindness afforded to me within the demo solely, and within the full sport, I would 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 occasions. 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 staff’s imaginative and prescient as properly.
From what I’ve performed thus far, the sport’s finest attribute is its ambiance. There’s a chilling stillness to the world. Enemies usually 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 system, which might find secret caches or puzzle areas, echoes by 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 comfortable to go alongside for that journey 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 staff featured largely artwork-focused builders. The mechanics of the sport naturally shifted to adapt to the art-driven sport. That was an fascinating wrinkle for me to be taught, because it means that the sport might have seemed fairly completely different if the stability between gameplay designers and world designers was skewed the opposite method. As a substitute, we received the icy-blue Finish of Abyss you possibly can see within the trailer above, which is unquestionably extra up my alley than a demanding combat-first sport the devs might have as soon as been concentrating on.
As somebody who loves Little Nightmares, enjoys twin-stick shooters, and does not look after souls-likes, I really feel what I noticed thus far is sufficient of these first two parts to permit me to not get pissed off by its third ingredient. Finish of Abyss appears to be the beginning of an intriguing new studio. It is coming to Epic Video games Retailer, Xbox Sequence X|S, and PS5 in 2026.