Oh, I do love a roguelike and the original Neon Abyss is up there with the greats: The Binding of Isaac, and Hades. A side-scrolling shooter with RNG elements and synergies galore, Veewo Games have taken what was one hell of a winning formula and added just a little extra spice to this 5 floor preview build of Neon Abyss 2, now with added, well, pretty much everything!
Set in a gloriously lurid, pixel art, cyberpunk universe, you’ll traverse randomly generated levels, exploring room by room, opening chests, gathering precious currency and blasting all manner of bad guys in the face. Save up for more powerful weapons (of which there are literally hundreds to collect), grab buffs from locked item rooms or search for secret passages, it’s all in aid of making sure that you are powerful enough to keep on ploughing your way through each floor.
Using shiny gold tokens, there are multiple perk and item trees to unlock, progression carrying through even if you fall in glorious battle taking on the hordes of enemies thrown at you. From what I’ve seen so far, there’s plenty to get your teeth into, promising hours of entertainment as you delve further and further each run, always looking to break the game and absolutely obliterate anything and everything in your path.
With a brand new Faith system now having been introduced to the game, you’ll have the opportunity at the start of each new floor to invoke powerful run-changing elements, such as extra special shops full of delicious loot or the ability to play luck based games to bolster your arsenal to enhance your damage dealing potential. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always go your way…
You’ll not have a moment to think and stop spraying bullets as you scramble to safety, using walls, crates, and just about anything you can get behind to stop the vicious onslaught of projectiles whizzing toward your fragile torso. With ever increasing waves of enemies looking to do you more than a little harm, stressful doesn’t do this justice! Luckily, you have a couple of nifty tricks to flip the script, the first of which is your conga line of hatching buddies.
Collect eggs from chests or as room rewards and there’s a chance these will break open, birthing a familiar known as a Hatchmon to assist in dealing damage. Suddenly, instead of being out-numbered and out-gunned, you and your ovoid allies will be taking the fight to your enemies, each cute little friend providing differing skills, maybe extra bullets, melee attacks or even buffs to rewards on leaving a room. Take care of them though (as they’ll only take so much punishment before shuffling off this mortal coil) or you’ll soon find yourself back at square one.
The other reason to take good care of your prized pets is to see how they combine with one another and evolve into ever more dangerous forms, as having a few of the same type will transform them into even greater familiars. Having spent hours in the first game, I can’t wait to see what crazy synergies we’ll end with this time as familiars play off buffs, which in turn will provide even more gunpower and general mayhem!
Another collectible that helps to stack the odds a little more in your favour are wisps, tiny glowing sparks that will make a beeline for any baddie in your way, inflicting damage whilst you keep your distance, a great way to get the upper hand in boss encounters before jumping into the fray. Speaking of which, each floor will have you battling huge ancient Gods before ripping open a portal to the next challenge, each a quirky & unique character with multiple stages of projectile based craziness to get your head around.
Whilst not too tough on easy or normal difficulty, hard or above will be a proper challenge to even battle-hardened veterans of the genre, with min/maxing exploration of the whole floor being advisable before you take on these bullet hell bastards. It’s eye-wateringly challenging trying to even keep track of your avatar bouncing across the stage, dodging whizzing projectiles and huge explosions but, with the opportunity to buddy up with three other friends and take on the Abyss together, I’ve not felt this egg-cited in a while!
All puns aside (even if some were absolutely cracking), Neon Abyss 2 is an absolute belter for anyone with even a passing interest in rogue-lites and roguelikes. It’s fast, it’s frantic and it’ll fry your brain on harder difficulty settings. With loads of playable characters including fan favourites and some brand new faces, each offering their own unique challenges, as well as a plethora of items to unlock, I can already tell that this is a must have, even from my short time with this preview build. So, here’s to a few hundred hours of gaudy, neon-lit, gun-slinging goodness in the near future.
Neon Abyss 2 is coming to PC via Steam early access on July 17th.
