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Death In Abyss has an incredible, amazing design with a speed and utility of freedom of motion akin to ULTRAKILL with gameplay inspired by games like Star Fox Assault and mecha games. 


I adore the retro-style graphics with terrifying eldritch sea creatures with a somewhat mysterious story.

The gameplay... although fun, feels gimmicky after a bit of playing. The concept of being able to save yourself during a grace period to KILL whatever may or may not be your death within 5 seconds is really dang cool, but the game doesn't explain it too clearly. Gaining health from killing enemies is a swell addition.


Genuinely-- this game has amazing personality, mystery, and from the first intro scene it has that feeling of terror that puts a lump in your throat, that later becomes an adrenaline filled fight to survive and obliterate all that comes after you with lasers, missiles, and precise piloting...


The game is well worth giving it a try... but I have criticisms...

I do hope that in the full game there are upgrades to deal with swarms of enemies, such as bigger missile explosions/fragmentation missiles to allow for more enjoyable ease of clearing groups of enemies, as with how the game is now clearing groups of minor enemies felt more like a chore than a terrifying fight to survive. Micromanaging in an annoying way rather than a rewarding and thrilling way. 


The game is filled with amazing potential... but...

I hate. HATE.HATE the first boss... and so far there is only one boss, which is awful. It felt like a boss that should be in a secret area or in a later phase of the game.


Before I continue with the first boss: The mechanic of snipers in this game is interesting but executed very poorly given the dodge mechanics needing to be tighter than a welded bolt-- and when you have to decide between dodging multiple enemies or a single sniper shot, you have to choose the sniper shot-- which causes unavoidable damage, which is not a fair design choice. It feels annoying and unfair. 

Back to the boss: It has four sniper eyes that shoots one after the other. You destroy one and the other three start firing faster.. but they also fire when you are not even within the Line of Sight of the eyeballs. It is a wretched experience with a 3 phase boss where the first phase has the awful design of "super hard = fun" and then the rest of the boss is equivalent to a tutorial fight. It is extremely jarring when you downloaded this very unique game only 10 minutes ago and the game expects you to already know how to dodge all these attacks with borderline perfect precision.



The game, again, is amazing in concept... and of course-- it's not even released. The demo gave me a longing to see a full game and I will happily support it. Once the design philosophy and vision has been completed, refined, and then perfected? I think this is a legendary game in the making akin to ULTRAKILL, Dusk, Shovel Knight, and other indie legends.