Abyss Seeker–What Do You See Deep in The Abyss

Genre: Top-Down 2-Stick Shooter / Roguelike

Players: 1

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Review:

Abyss Seeker is a Top-Down 2-Stick Shooter and Roguelike with occasional Bullet Hell elements released on PC in 2024 and ported to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in 2024. This game, apparently released as a follow-up or companion piece to 2024’s Heaven Seeker, uses the same basic gameplay but mixes up the game structure, resulting in something different yet familiar when compared to its predecessor.

The game’s story is poorly-localized, and in fact, before you even start the game, you’ll want to go into the game’s options menus and change the language to English because it defaults to what I’m guessing is Japanese (it’s not hard to feel around for this option, at least – it’s the first option of the first sub-page of the first options menu).

The presentation here is decent, using simple 2D pixel art visuals with anime-style 2D portrait art for the characters. It gets the job done, but it’s nothing impressive, and in fact, when the action starts to get heavy you’ll encounter plenty of slowdown. All of this is backed by a synthesized soundtrack that’s reasonably energetic enough for the action, though it gets repetitive before long.

Abyss Seeker eschews the randomized rooms of Heaven Seeker and simply has you fighting a constant stream of spawning enemies within one room, trying to survive a set amount of time until a boss is summoned to fight. While this means that you won’t get the variety of room types that Heaven Seeker had, you do have a more open, wider area to fight in, with a game flow that more closely resembles Vampire Survivors, complete with players collecting bits enemies leave behind to gradually level up their character and gain access to a selection of three randomized upgrades for their character’s attack. When you inevitably lose all your health in a run, you can unlock permanent upgrades, giving you a better shot in your next run.

Apart from the slowdown, I suppose my biggest complaint here is the way the game limits how many upgrades you can have in a run, forcing you to pick and choose which upgrades to keep and which to leave behind. Over time, you get a greater capacity for these upgrades, but having a limit at all seems to run counter to the powerful feeling players generally want to get when they play a game like this.

Overall, Abyss Seeker is a much more simple and repetitive game than Heaven Seeker, but I think I prefer it to its predecessor, with its gameplay feeling more trance-like and relaxed. And I definitely prefer its bargain bin price tag of $2. At that price, it’s much easier to recommend this game, despite its shortcomings. And if you decide you want to play Heaven Seeker to get something a bit deeper, this game will unlock its character within that one.

Overall, I think that Abyss Seeker has its flaws, but for only $2, this is a pretty enjoyable game. You’ll definitely want to be sure to change the languages in the menus when you first fire it up, and it has other issues as well, but this is one of the best games I’ve found on Nintendo Switch under $2, so cheapskates should definitely give it a try.

tl;dr – Abyss Seeker is a 2-Stick Shooter Roguelike that has players altering their magical attacks with upgrades they collect in each run. While this game has some gameplay mechanics in common with its predecessor Heaven Seeker, the more simplified gameplay actually works in its favor, and the rock-bottom $2 price makes this an easy game to recommend. If you’re looking for something cheap with some fun action, this is worth a look.

Grade: B

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