Luna Abyss

                                              

Publisher: Kwalee

Developer: Kwalee Labs

Platforms: Playstation 5 (Reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft Windows

Price: $29.99

[Please forgive any formatting issues you may come across in this review. I've had to fight blogger for the whole day because of some URL generation issues, and the copy-pasting seems to have possibly knocked some things out of whack. Hopefully the next review won't be so hard to get out!]

If I had a nickel for every bullet hell shooter with immaculate sci-fi vibes and a location with implied sentience that I've played within the past couple weeks, I'd have two nickels...which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. 

If you haven't yet heard of Luna Abyss, that's likely for one of two reasons. The first is that you might have actually heard of it but the name is so generic that you forgot. The second is that...well...nobody has heard of it. At least it doesn't seem that way.

But I'm here today to hopefully change that, dear reader. Luna Abyss is by no means flawless, but for a AA game, it's a borderline "can't miss" affair. 

Some aspects of the story are still a bit unclear to me and I'm likely to get things wrong, so bear with me. Luna Abyss follows Fawkes - a prisoner kept in a high-security facility on the moon. They're a prisoner because of their red eyes, which in this world triggers some sort of major prejudice back on Earth. The prison sentence, in this case, is well over 9,000 days.

But all is not lost! Everyone held in this facility has a way of reducing their sentences: working down in "The Abyss." This is essentially an entire realm deep within the prison that's big enough to contain entire cities and skylines, and it appears to have some sort of awareness about the goings on within it. 

Prisoners remotely take control of "wardens" that are suited to some manner of work down there, and they reduce their sentences by fitting into those assigned roles. 

Some wardens are simply big bunches of eyes attached to walls, making their pilots a sort of de-facto surveillance outfit. Some are spider-like with the ability to reach impossible places. Some are giants with ridiculously powerful weapons that are for "excavating" and "clearing rubble." And some are just foot soldiers, which is what Fawkes is assigned to. 

However, Fawkes is no ordinary person. No, they're basically a chosen one, and thus their warden is granted a degree of special power and the ability to possess other wardens. So, Fawkes and their handler ultimately set out into The Abyss to seek the truth about the "All-Father" that governs the prison and learn more about the moon's past. 

If that last sentence plus the villain's name didn't spell this out well enough, the story side of things is a mixed bag. So let's get the positives out of the way first.

The strongest aspect of this story is its lore depth and just the setting in general. You'll find text logs scattered throughout the various levels that flesh the world out to a shocking degree. Despite the painfully generic title, this is one of the most unique worlds in any game this year. All you need to do to see that is simply exist in it for a while.

Equally unique is...some of the story. You've already correctly guessed that the "All-Father" isn't exactly a benevolent ruler and that there's some kind of deeper truth to the prison. But what you haven't already guessed is literally everything else. So while there are groan-inducingly predictable twists and turns, the building blocks of this story are actually quite good. 

Where Luna Abyss' concept and execution fails is in its writing. But it's kind of like an "old school" bit of bad writing. Not quite quips...but more...a proto-version of them? I don't know, it's hard to describe, but suffice it to say there's some out-of-place humor. 

Sadly, the serious writing is seldom better. This is a very weird thing for a militant anti-chud like myself to have latched on to...but for example, there's a single line of dialogue (and literally not even one other such line in the whole game for some reason) about halfway through that I can best describe as "if Taash from Dragon Age: The Veilguard couldn't be memed." I've already done a better job of conveying the same idea the devs were trying to convey in this very review. The bad writing extends to more than just this singular line, obviously, but it was the one that made me throw my head back and go "ohhhhhh, that was weeeeeeeeeaaaaak!" 

So, Luna Abyss features one of 2026's strongest worlds, but that world is ultimately let down by a lackluster script. 

If I had a nickel for every bullet hell shooter with immaculate sci-fi vibes, a location with implied sentience, and flat writing that I've played within the past couple weeks...

But hey. Gameplay is king, right? 

Right.

And it happens to be quite good in Luna Abyss, albeit clearly a product of its AA budget. This is a first-person bullet hell shooter, so you'll be shooting enemies as they send wave upon wave of projectiles for you to dodge. 

Because of the proximity between this review and the one for Saros, that's the most obvious comparison to make. While Saros is a speedier, more chaotic iteration of the bullet hell formula, Luna Abyss is more intentional (both in its combat and its structure, since it isn't a roguelike). Projectiles move at a snail's pace, but they come more tightly packed. The fastest-firing weapon shoots maybe 4 rounds per second, and the other weapons can only be fired 1-3 times before a cooldown is needed. It's not "slow-paced" combat by any means, but it's the slowest-paced bullet hell combat I think I've been through. 

If you think that means it isn't for you...I don't think you're correct. This game has a way of disguising its combat speed with things like Metroid Prime-esque snap aiming and tightly-spaced combat arenas. I legitimately think you'll be surprised by how fluid it all feels...mostly.

Make no mistake, this is a recognizably AA game. The guns all feel pretty weak, and the limited acrobatics you can use to avoid damage just aren't sufficient. They aren't executed fast enough to be thrilling and it often feels like a coin flip to determine if you actually moved high or far enough to avoid a projectile. 

Thankfully, Luna Abyss offers a couple other ways to survive combat that work a bit better. 

The worst of these is a deployable shield, and I only say it's the "worst" of them because I regularly forgot it was there. I completed the whole game having never used it outside of its tutorial because I just...forgot. That should speak volumes about how exciting it is to use, but it definitely would have come in handy had I remembered it...so it still counts as a gameplay facet that works well in my book.

If I continue in order of quality, the next tool to talk about would be one of the two "skills." When you deplete an enemy's health, you're presented with a window in which to use these skills. 

This first one I'm discussing is executed by holding down the skill button (R1/RMB). It causes the relevant enemy to explode into a bunch of spikes. These spikes damage nearby enemies and break shields that you otherwise would need to switch to another weapon to break. The weapon swapping in this game isn't fantastic, so this serves as a way to organically maintain a better combat pace.

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that despite my discussions about combat speed and the like, I've never once referred to Luna Abyss as "difficult." That's because of the last combat tool to discuss: the other skill. This one is executed with a simple press of the skill button, and it kills the enemy to replenish your health. Keeping in mind that this is a bullet hell and there are enemies all over the place, I'm sure you can put two-and-two together. 

So if challenge is the thing you're looking for, that might be where this game isn't for you. But if you're just wanting a frantic bullet hell experience where killing-to-heal is part of the chaos, then you might have as much fun with this gameplay loop as I did!

And if not, then it's worth noting that combat is only half the gameplay equation. 

Interestingly, despite that earlier complaint about the acrobatics you use in combat, those acrobatics are perfectly (I repeat: perfectly) calibrated for the other half of the gameplay loop: platforming. Like with the combat, the platforming isn't very challenging...but it feels challenging. You'll find yourself being thrown massive distances, and you'll be sure you went off track and you're about to die...but then you'll see something that wasn't visible from your earlier distance and the whole puzzle will click in your head in an instant. I can't say too much more on this because the surprise of what you'll end up pulling off is a serious selling point. You'll just have to take my word for it!

One area in which Luna Abyss definitely doesn't feel AA is in its technical polish. No framerate dips, no low-quality textures, no obvious glitches, nothing you might expect from a modestly-budgeted project. There are times where you'll be paused with a loading screen mid-level...but that was true for Half-Life 2 as well. I don't count that as a negative. 

Let's not just dwell on what Luna Abyss "doesn't do wrong", though. There's plenty of stuff that it actively does well, too! 

For starters, the vibes. Good god, the vibes! The look and feel of Luna Abyss are in line with a subgenre of sci-fi that I like to call "giant wire sci-fi." It almost always feels like you're in the bowels of some machine thanks to the, you guessed, it, giant wires that make up the world. Helping the atmosphere along is a consistent black-gray-white-red color palette that only changes when a new level decides it wants to have an especially striking look. 

Then there's the soundtrack. It's the best soundtrack of the year so far.

Yeah...the best one so far. In an unassuming little AA title. From literally the first piece that played during the opening sequence, I felt every hair on my arms stand up, blasphemed under my breath, and wondered if this was actually a "hidden" gem. 

Choral requiems that could convincingly be heard in a church (a lot of latin choral things in soundtracks just feel fake) in "Fawkes' Requiem." 

Mass Effect-style sci-fi droning in "Scourge-Ridden."

Straightforward beauty in "Sky Chambers."

Bloodborne-esque horror in "False God."

These soundscapes and more are what await you in the Luna Abyss soundtrack. Sadly, you can only listen to these tracks as part of the "full ost" video on YouTube for now, but it's worth the time to scroll through that lovingly timestamped video.

Luna Abyss is not a perfect game. 

Bad writing taints what otherwise is a surprisingly good story and an absolutely fascinating world. 

Combat is slightly held back by a bit of AA jank. 

Its lack of anything else to complain about prevents me from adhering to the rule of threes.

But these are ultimately nitpicks in the grand scheme of things. The combat excels at what it does in spite of that AA jank. The platforming takes what should by all rights be janky acrobatics and turns them into a perfectly curated system. The world and story stayed excellent in my head despite the occasional bit of groaning. And the vibes and the soundtrack could've carried the experience quite a long way even if none of those other positives were true.

So, I'm highly recommending Luna Abyss. It's no Saros, but it is a heavy-hitting little underdog with basically no attention from the world. Time to change that, if you want my opinion!

Let us review:

Poor script - 0.5

Combat jank - 1.0

The final score for Luna Abyss is...

8.5/10 - Near Fantastic