Last week was, ostensibly, the bullet heaven’s week. Steam declared it so with an official store tag, which I believe means everyone has to call each new entry in the Vampire Survivors genre a bullet heaven under penalty of law. But at least for me, the standout game of last week wasn’t in the bullet heaven family: it was a bullet hell shooter.
Luna Abyss follows in the footsteps of Returnal by taking what was long a type of game about dodging hundreds of 2D orbs and making it a type of game about dodging hundreds of 3D orbs, instead. Pulsing, brightly colored bullets fly towards you in mesmerizing patterns, and you must dodge and weave between them as you shoot back at whatever wants you dead.
The bullet hell is more than 30 years old, but all Luna Abyss had to do to make it feel fresh was put it in first-person, robbing you of the peripheral vision Returnal is kind enough to offer. I first played a demo of it two years ago, and realized I somehow hadn’t played anything like it.
There’s something so lizard-brain compelling about weaving in between those glowing orbs that I plowed through the first too-simple, overly talky hour of Luna Abyss waiting for it to liven up. Even on the third of four difficulty settings, Luna Abyss is so easy for so long that it seems designed for someone using a controller who’s also maybe never played a first-person shooter? The health bar’s gigantic, and I kept finding power-ups to expand it further while I was barely even taking damage. Then I found a power-up that let me perform a finishing move on enemies to restore my health. Then I kicked the difficulty up to the hardest level and still didn’t die for a while.
Then a boss killed me about 20 times. Luna Abyss does arrive at full-on bullet hell eventually, it just takes its sweet time getting there.
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Once Luna Abyss drip fed me a couple more weapons and abilities, its combat encounters started to evoke Doom Eternal, prompting me to dash, fire, and counter like a juggler turned hitman. Swap to the shotgun to take down blue shields; snipe long-range eyeball cannons with a rifle as they charge up; weave between bullets while taking down the grunts with steady lock-on fire, but be ready to throw down a shield if the homing, exploding suicide bombers get too close. It’s a split-second call whether to absorb a near-death enemy for a bit of health, or to keep holding the “finish them” button to instead perform an overkill that damages all the surrounding baddies.
What keeps Luna Abyss pretty approachable, even when juggling all of that and weaving between a screenful of deadly fire, is the lock-on. Where Doom Eternal demands an exhausting level of attention at all times to land headshots and crits while dodging and minding cooldowns, Luna Abyss doesn’t actually care much about aiming. You hold down right-click to lock onto any enemy and then tap left-click until they die. This feels right, given the shmups that made the bullet hell a thing let you hold down the fire button while you focused on navigating the tiny gaps through a screen of death.
There are clearly places where this combat loop could be improved that I don’t expect to find in the back half of the game, though I’d be pleasantly surprised. So far each new weapon is effectively a key for a particular combat lock, opening up an enemy to damage. There’s no real room for expression in how I use them, or in what order, exacerbated by the fact that aiming basically doesn’t matter.
Add-ons that increased damage at the expense of overheating, fiddled with firing rate, or added alternate modes could nudge my play style in a more personal direction, but there’s none of that to be found. It’s a testament to how satisfying the basic rhythm is that I left each arena hungry for another fight rather than bored.
The primary weapon fires a laser that makes me feel like I’m doing surgery from 30 meters, while the shield breaker shotgun’s fire blossoms out in a cross when a hit lands in a delightful bit of visual feedback. But really, the joy here is just in the simple flow state execution: Tap the mouse wheel to swap between guns, never stop firing, don’t blink when the next arcing pattern of bullets flies towards you. Find the gap.
As Luna Abyss starts layering weapons and abilities into combat, it does the same for the platforming, which is where it really distinguishes itself from Returnal’s roguelike structure. Everything on this forsaken moon is built at a scale a thousand times your size. It makes Warhammer 40K’s vast halls and factory planets look Hobbit-sized by comparison. It’s dark. So dark that the blacks have been punched up to a hazy gray so you can jump like a flea from one pipe or platform to another above the infinite void. It’s one of the best games I’ve ever played for gawking at the sense of scale and then smashing the screenshot key. My gawk quota was already full by, like, hour two, and it kept delivering.
(Image credit: Kwalee Labs)
I wish it did less talking during these exploratory bits, but unfortunately Luna Abyss regularly introduces aloof or goofy Soulsy NPCs who have nothing much to say but are still gonna say it, and what passes for a cutscene is usually an awkward camera pan as a character model just… doesn’t animate.
The crumbling remains of this vast place would be more quietly compelling without the frequent chatter between my character and the voice telling me where to go at all times. I don’t know if the raw animalistic pleasure of bullet hell, the gamiest of games, is truly incompatible with Luna Abyss’s chatty tone, but, well, I don’t think Phil Tippett’s Mad God would’ve been improved by a character saying “According to my analysis, there’s a large structure down there.”
Anyway, the orbs and obelisks: those rock. Luna Abyss is proof the bullet hell FPS should be a thing. If it gets a sequel, I just hope a developer from a boomer shooter like Amid Evil or Boltgun comes in to consult on the guns, giving the arsenal some genuine depth.
