Samus-Inspired Survival Success

I first played End of Abyss at a Summer Game Fest demo in 2024, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. The full release is about as good as I hoped it would be, blending Metroid's familiar formula with a survival horror flair, making it stand out even amongst an oversaturated crowd of indies. My playthrough was unfortunately infested with some major bugs, but I enjoyed the rest of the experience enough to largely brush those aside.

In End of Abyss, you play as a technician who ventures into an abandoned facility alongside soldiers and their captain. The setting is liminal and mysterious – fitting for a survival horror game – where you must seek out old notes and item descriptions if you want narrative context. The atmosphere is cold and lonely, and even your armed companions seem disinterested in helping you complete your tasks. For a game so light on plot, I found myself instantly sucked into its worldbuilding, cautiously curious to know what was around every corner.

It helps that the complex is a joy to explore. End of Abyss is clearly inspired by the Metroid series and borrows some of its best traits. The map constantly winds in on itself, and you're just as likely to discover a shortcut back to a previous area as you are to find a rare resource. Even in the sea of similar indie games, I was consistently impressed by End of Abyss' large-scale level design. There's also a scanner (à la Metroid Prime) that allows you to analyze enemies and search the environment for ways to progress. I don't know what the facility is called, and even after rolling credits, I'm not quite sure what purpose it served, but the setting is one of End of Abyss' most memorable highlights.

While End of Abyss is structurally similar to Metroid, it's also a survival horror game with twin-stick shooting. Your pistol has infinite ammo, but you need to craft bullets for other weapons you find (most of which are optional). Every conflict is tense, making my narrow victories satisfying, and the game has just enough enemy variety to keep things interesting, including zombies, bugs, and robots. Different enemy types also have their own weaknesses, so you're encouraged to use your full arsenal of weapons.

Bosses, on the other hand, weren't always as fun to encounter. These tough showdowns are balanced well from a combat perspective, but repeated attempts drain your valuable ammo and grenades quickly. On more than one occasion, I had to grind for bullets and bombs before returning. The alternative is to rely on your starting pistol, but most health bars are so large that it's too tedious to rely on the handgun alone. This became less of an issue in the late game, when I had more weapons and therefore more types of ammo in stock.

Finally, there's the elephant in the room; my time with End of Abyss was rife with bugs. I got stuck in walls, encountered invisible walls, and even fell out of bounds at one point. The map would also have glitches, marking unlocked doors as locked or omitting certain landmarks, making backtracking confusing. And perhaps most frustrating of all, some doors would fail to prompt me with the "open" button, leaving me unable to enter until I quit and reloaded. The bright side is you save frequently to heal, so resets don't erase much progress. End of Abyss has also already received multiple patches during my playtime, and some issues have been resolved, but it affected my experience nonetheless.

Despite the glitches, I loved snooping through the cold, industrial hallways of End of Abyss, and the bugs did surprisingly little to affect my overall opinion. I've been looking forward to End of Abyss for quite some time, and I'm pleased that it mostly lived up to those expectations.