I’ve written many times about the great love of indie studios for the rogue genre, with procedurally generated levels, endless bosses, and fierce enemies. Company Veewo Games decided to connect the worlds Neil Gaiman and The Binding of Isaac with echoes Enter the gungeon in his new project Neon abyss…
According to the plot, the new means of communication and the Internet destroyed the old gods, giving incredible power to the new ones. The god of death, Hades, is the only one of the old gods who was able to hide in his neon bar, where he called you and other soldiers of the deadly resistance to challenge technological progress. You must go down into the abyss, complete levels and destroy the main villain.
Using The Binding of Isaac as inspiration, the authors offer small dungeons with arenas, treasures and secret rooms, where you will find improvements, protection and new weapons.
While strengthening your character, you must defeat the mini-boss of the level in order to pass the remaining dungeons and destroy the new deity. After running through all the stages and defeating the main boss, you return to the bar to improve your hero, and then descend to even deeper levels of the abyss in search of the remaining dark gods. In the event of death, you lose all progress, weapons, talismans and items, but you retain the basic pumping and experience points needed to improve the fighter.
The levels themselves consist of closed rooms, to open which you need to collect special keys. Some rooms have teleportation crystals, making it easier to move quickly through the maze. Secret places or rooms with merchants, if you do not find the key, will require sacrifices from you in the form of a part of health in exchange for the opportunity to buy armor or medicine for gold coins. Individual shrines can bestow you with super-powerful weapons or an extra heart.
Ordinary enemies, like intermediate bosses, do not pose much of a danger, even on a normal difficulty level. It is enough to follow a simple pattern and use the entire available arsenal of primary and secondary weapons. In addition, Neon Abyss offers companion mechanics that can hatch from eggs you find there in the same level. Companions are capable of strengthening your defense, inflicting additional damage or other bonuses, but at the same time they litter the screen, getting underfoot and causing confusion in fights.
Weapons in the Neon Abyss world do not always have the desired effect. The laser installation may be weaker than a regular rifle, and the unit, which releases a bunch of beams in all directions, is useless against the next boss. At the same time, the authors approach the creation of weapons with humor, offering you a cat cannon or a bunch that shoots keys that can open a locked chest. In total, the developers have promised more than 400 types of weapons and items, which is noticeable in various unique modifications of assault rifles or rocket launchers.
But the main problem with Neon Abyss lies in its game structure: after you pass the first abyss, assume that you have completed the entire game. Yes, the final bosses will be different, but along the way you will encounter the same enemies, mini-bosses and rooms with the same content. And there is no motivation to continue exploring further, as the game does not reward any unique content other than a variety of weapons and items that you may have encountered during your first playthrough.
