Phantom Abyss - Review

In June 2021, Devolver Digital and developer Team WIBY whipped a little game out to players via Early Access, now more than two and a half years later, the game has finally been given its 1.0 release. Has the time between been worth the wait for Phantom Abyss?

There is a very basic story, where you have been captured/abducted/find yourself trapped within a mystical temple and a giant stone statue advises that you can escape, if you break the chains that hold them in place. So that is your goal, but there is more going on and for obvious reasons I won’t say anything beyond that. What I do want to talk about is how much the game has changed from its initial release, not just in terms of new items and such being added, but how the entire game now plays very differently from what it first did. In the original release there were three tiers of whips, Green, Blue and Red and each whip had a bonus effect and a negative one. Once you cleared a run of the same colour, ie green for green, the negative effect would be removed. A major update throughout the dev cycle removed that basic idea and instead added in permanent blessings and curses to each whip. For example taking the whip that removes the guardians, meant you could never have more than one heart. Now however the game has changed again and I am not entirely sure it’s for the better.

There are three main game modes on offer here, Adventure which lets you experience all the whips, Abyss which is more of your traditional style and then the Daily Challenge temple, which as its name suggests is a single level that changes daily. That last one is great for those players who want to see how their whip cracking skills stack up against the rest of the world, but for those who want to challenge themselves, then the first two are where you are going to spend the bulk of your time. The Adventure mode is the more challenging of the three, as you can customise things before you get into the run. Once you have selected the whip you wish to use, along with its associated blessing and curses, you can also add in extra challenges, to get a better reward score. These extra challenges can be a simple as not touching the water, or a temple guardian might be on a level or two higher, you can also turn them off if they are proving to be to much, but the Abyss mode, that one is not for the faint of heart, but there is a decent challenge in Adventure mode to try first.

Once you have unchained Altec, you can unlock a more traditional run, where there is a room from each tier to run through, the massive challenge there is that all three guardians are summoned in. This means that if you thought that The Devouring Rage was a pain as it chases you down relentlessly, mixing in both the Eye of Agony and The Masked Defiler is going to really test your skill. I got very lucky in my first attempt at this and managed to get a blessing that removed all guardians from the temple for 3 rooms, which meant the final room would see them reappear. I went into that final room with a decent amount of health and was ready to push through to the end, however with that insane level of challenge that the final tier offers and three Guardians, I died almost right away. I found that getting to that room is not the hard part, all the Guardians around or not, but getting through that final stretch, its more of a challenge than I could have predicted, but it pails in comparison to the Abyss mode.

Abyss mode is your more traditional run, something that early access players will be familiar with. Here you can take in any whip, so double jump, iron feet or even the vanish Guardians and then you have to clear a few rooms in each tier, making your way to the relic. What makes this different from the original version is that the Guardians don’t get harder with each room you clear, but rather a new curse is added and some of them can be insane. The first time I did this run, the first curse was that the phantoms did not drop their essence when they died, meaning no extra health for me. From then on it was they stole all the coins, traps were 15% more dangerous and so on, each step closer to the end meant that each curse was making things much harder. The most innocuous sounding curse is that a gentle breeze wafts through the temple, which sounds easy. Except the breeze stops and starts and with each start comes a new direction for it to move in, including down and that makes your jumps harder to complete.

Thankfully with the keys that you collect, which previously were only used to unlock the next tier of rooms in a run, they can be used to purchase permanent upgrades for yourself. These range from extra hearts, to a longer whip and even more coins to start with. Most of the options in the upgrade menu have levels to unlock, which slowly cost more and more with each one you buy, so eventually you will need keys from the final tier of rooms to get the best upgrades and that won’t be an easy feat. These upgrades come with you into any of the modes, so if you want to punish yourself in the Abyss mode, then doing the Adventure mode a bit is the best way to level up. Of course, for each upgrade you get, the game has a curse just waiting to be applied in it, so just be wary.

Something that has changed for the better since the games first release, is the presentation. Now the overall style is much the same, but everything has been plussed up, making for a richer experience. Much of the layouts remains the same, but as you descend further into the temples, or jumping straight into the final tier, then you will see the differences. Traps are perhaps the biggest upgrade as they now offer up epic versions, which can be a simple as some jagged spikes on something, or armour plating on a homing mine. While the look is much cooler on these advanced designs, they also do more damage, so best not to get that close while you inspect them. Phantoms that run alongside you are still that transparent blue and their trail is still little dots that fade away in time. I would have loved to have seen some different colours here, but sadly there are no accessibility options for that. The games final area is the one newest to me and of course, they have done some great things with its designs, however in one run I came across it with the colours basically inverted and I have no idea if it was meant to do that, or the game was just having a moment.

On the audio side there isn’t a lot to say, the music ramps up when the danger does, but there are times when its off and all you hear is the wind blowing through the room. The enemies audial designs are interesting, hearing that screech from the Homing Mine from behind you, as you dash into a room, can be terrifying at times. Sadly most of the mix is overshadowed by the Guardians, which sound great, but when they are constantly spawning in, making a lot of noise and then shooting things at you or radiating heat near you, it dwarfs the rest.

With Phantom Abyss finally coming out of Early Access, I can only hope there is more to come, because while the resetting of my progress is annoying, the overall appeal of the game is still here for me. Adventure mode is a one and done experience for me, though it is great for key farming if you need them, but the Abyss mode is really going to test players of all skills, even those who have spent the past 2 years enjoying the game. Will this be a title for all to enjoy, it’s a hard thing to say, the gameplay is fairly basic and won’t require a lot to learn, but with some runs being punishing from the outset and others just having so much going on, it might scare away some less enthusiastic players. If you are someone who wants a challenge, but doesn’t want to constantly have to pair up with players in real time, it will scratch that itch, just know that if you don’t like constantly doing the same action over and over again, this won’t be the game for you. While the wait for the full release was far longer than it should have been, the end result is a game that is challenging and satisfying when you complete a run, and that is a good thing in my book.

The Score

8.5

Review code provided by Devolver Digital

The Pros

The new area is challenging like nothing else and requires a lot of skill to handle

Abyss runs are going to test players like nothing else and its delightful to try

The Cons

Losing my progress swapping from early access to 1.0 sucks

There are times when visually the game gets confusing, so some alternate colour schemes or accessibility options would have been nice