Luna Abyss

TLDR: Luna Abyss is a good game and although it is short it is entertaining enough to keep me intrigued. The combat is not difficult so anyone who has always liked the idea of a bullet hell game but feels they don’t have the dexterity or skill to play one, can play this. There are difficulty levels that range from easy to very difficult. Luna Abyss is a 7-12hr (20hrs is you are a ‘look in every corner’ kind of player) experience that is well worth your time. It is £25 on Steam with a Very Positive rating (414 reviews) and is currently on Game Pass.

Luna Abyss is a bullet-hell game in the style of Returnal and Nier Automata. You run through alternating battle arenas where you face multiple enemies and light puzzles that are not difficult but rather are more dexterity or parkour based. As the game progresses, you acquire new tools that allow you to tackle new enemies and new puzzle mechanics. For instance there is a basic gun that damages all enemies but later you acquire a shot-gun style weapon that destroys an enemy's shields. These are used to solve various puzzles as well, as there are doors that have a force field that require the shield destroying gun in order to progress. 

At the begining of the game. you discover that you are a prisoner who is sentenced to thousands of days of delving into a centuries old ruin on a mimic moon called Luna. A deity called the All-Father requires you to explore the structures in order to bring back technology all the while being overseen by your artificial prison guard Alyin. She is a human head on a mechanical snake-like neck within your prison cell. The world outside on the moon has been changed by a world altering cataclysm called the Scourge which has turned the citisens of the city into walking monsters. As you make your way through you discover more about what happened to the people and the city via notes and conversations with the various non aggressive characters you meet. 

The levels are linear and guide you through corridors with both vertical and horizontal movement. There are new abilities that help with this traversal such as a dodge and a double jump, as well as abilities that are situational and require you to press the E key to activate them. I don’t want to spoil anything but if you have played games like this before I feel you will not be overly surprised when the ability is revealed. While moving around in later levels, you will often need to chain together the various movement mechanics and this can feel very satisfying when you get it right. None of the puzzles are particularly difficult unless you suffer from fat fingers like I do. 

The combat is not difficult. When you start the game there are multiple difficulty levels and I played it on the second most difficult. None of the basic combat arenas you enter were a struggle and I felt that on the rare occasion I died in these, it was down to me which is always a plus to me. The boss encounters are slightly different. As it is a bullet hell game, you can imagine that when you encounter a boss you will need to use all your current tools you have at your disposal in order to defeat the boss. Each boss has multiple stages although the stages are not necessarily that different from each other but rather are interspersed with a mechanic that requires you to either destroy multiple smaller enemies, destroy something (like a shield) that makes the boss invulnerable or move around the arena in order to press buttons or other such mechanics. There are also similar arenas that have your basic enemies as well as more difficult enemies that are not quite mini bosses but rather an introduction to a new, more dangerous enemy. These are usually indicated by a spinning head alarm system that goes off as you enter and requires all enemies to be destroyed before allowing you to progress by opening an exit. 

These arenas become more intense as you discover different types of enemies that require different tactics to defeat them, add to this the enemies have different attack patterns and their attacks have different speeds. This was a minor gripe for me as it seemed to me that some of the attacks at times would hone in on me, often careering around walls to hit me. There is no direct healing, but rather a skill you receive that allows you to recover a small amount of received damage by finishing the enemy similar to the mechanic in Doom but from a distance rather than with a melee attack. 

The characters in the game are one of the highlights for me. They are interesting and well voiced. I do wish the conversations were able to be set to autoadvance. You have to click after every voiceline in order to have the conversation continue and as the lines are only a sentence or so at a time this gets a little tedious. This may be in the setting somewhere, but I couldn’t find it. All dialog with the people you meet is purposeful and although you can have two options to choose from when replying to them, I am not sure that it makes much difference. 

The game isn’t long somewhere between 7-12hrs but I have heard people have taken 20hrs if they are looking in every nook and cranny for secrets. There are secrets in the game, but I feel they are not hidden everywhere and are messages for your codex or more law information. There are chests that contain health upgrades and Dust Crystals but I think the health is generally well marked and the crystals are not necessary as I have not found a use for them but there is a counter in the pause menu that let you know how many messages, crystals and health increases you have found and how many there are overall. 

The game is fairly short and concise and there are rapid enough changes as you go along to keep it interesting. Although the game is not doing anything new as such, it is interesting and unique enough to hold your interest while doing what it does well. The combat is fun, the shooting responsive and the parkour stretches you enough to make it entertaining. Although I haven't finished it yet, the story has kept me intrigued and the characters are endearing and I want to see it through. 

Overall I was impressed with the game as a whole. The mechanics are tight (always a requirement for games like this), the combat and shooting was fun and the story was interesting to me making me want to see the story through. I liked the characters (although you don’t have that much interaction with many of them) and the dialog was well written and voiced. I would definitely suggest this to most people and there is a demo on Steam if you are not completely sold and would like to give it a try although I am not sure how good a representation of the game it is as I have not played it.