There have been extra souls-likes than I might muster the curiosity in at Summer season 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 instances through 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 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.
End 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 undoubtedly be felt in End 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 possibly it is their brightly coloured jacket–here a lime inexperienced versus Little Nightmare’s yellow raincoat.
Fortunately, the protagonist in End of Abyss can defend themselves, not like 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 might bounce on me, inflicting me to shake them off and guide it, or attempt to knife them on their strategy.
The souls-like inspirations might be felt in a couple of methods some gamers might be aware of. For one, the map feels round in that satisfying means 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 whenever 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 avoid wasting or improve my character. There aren’t any corpse runs, however the sport will punish you for failing to avoid wasting manually, so these shortcuts again to a protected haven might be important for survival.
I acquired 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 anticipate 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 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 nicely.
From what I’ve performed to this point, the sport’s finest attribute is its environment. 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, uncertain of what is round every nook. Your scanner machine, which might find secret caches or puzzle areas, echoes by means 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 joyful 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 growth 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 fascinating wrinkle for me to be taught, because it means that the sport could have seemed fairly completely different if the stability between gameplay designers and world designers was skewed the opposite means. As a substitute, we acquired the icy-blue End of Abyss you’ll be able to see within the trailer above, which is certainly extra up my alley than a demanding combat-first sport the devs could have as soon as been concentrating on.
As somebody who loves Little Nightmares, enjoys twin-stick shooters, and would not take care of souls-likes, I really feel what I noticed to this point is sufficient of these first two parts to permit me to not get pissed off by its third ingredient. End of Abyss appears to be the beginning of an intriguing new studio. It is coming to Epic Games Retailer, Xbox Sequence X|S, and PS5 in 2026.