Chris InglisIf you took the underwater, industrialised aesthetic of BioShock and combined it with the bite-sized missions that act as localised combat arenas of the likes of the third person variant Remnant I, you end up with Abyssus. Developed by Swedish indie studio DoubleMoose Games and published by The Arcade Crew, this brinepunk first-person roguelite shooter has finally launched on consoles as of June 25, 2026, landing alongside a massive 1.3 update that introduces full cross-play.
You are recruited into a team of Brinehunters tasked with exploring the subaquatic ruins of an ancient, Atlantis-inspired civilisation. Your main target is brine which is a glowing and powerful substance hidden deep within the ocean floor. The mutated, corrupted guardians protecting the sunken kingdom aren’t keen on sharing, turning your salvage op into an aggressive struggle for survival. While there aren’t huge swarms of monsters, if you are too static then you will quickly be overrun. This is especially so in your first couple of runs where you only have one heal available to you until you unlock more later via the soul tree.
Visually, Abyssus looks sharp and runs super smoothly on the Xbox Series X. The environmental design is dripping with heavy copper piping, crumbling underwater temples, and glowing aquatic flora. It successfully creates a gritty, claustrophobic atmosphere that separates it visually from a lot of the bright, cartoonish roguelites available today. Moving around the combat arenas feels great, utilising verticality, double jump and shift to mid-air dash across chasms as you try to take out the enemies in the area.
Your arsenal starts off modestly but through exploration and unlocking more of the 9 base weapons, you learn after a couple of runs which weapons are more suited for the enemies faced. Ranging from a standard rifle to heavy-hitting shotguns and a powerful pistol, all of which can be customised at workbenches with over 45 distinct weapon mods. The real fun comes from picking up blessings mid-run which infuse your bullets with things like fire, ice, or lightning damage as well as bonuses to bleeding, crit damage and a heap more options to personalise your run.
The game structures its runs across 70+ hand-crafted levels that are procedurally sequenced into short, snappy 20 to 30-minute runs. You drop in, navigate an atmospheric zone, clear out aggressive waves, grab your upgrades on the permanent soul wheel, rinse and repeat. While the gunplay itself is incredibly smooth, the operational loop runs into a structural wall relatively quickly. Despite the procedural generation, room layouts begin to repeat often, and the mid-run upgrades frequently amount to the same single-digit percentage stat boosts rather than run-altering gameplay shifts.
However, much like my experience in Remnant II, the experience shifts dramatically depending on whether you are diving alone or with a co-op crew. When you group up with a squad of 2 to 4 players over voice comms, the game’s adaptive difficulty spikes hard, throwing massive, aggressive waves of resilient enemies at you. Boss fights then become this spectacular, bright firefight and woops of triumph over voice comms.
Overall, Abyssus delivers a highly atmospheric shooter experience with tight gunplay, a fascinating brinepunk world, and the boss fights are genuinely engaging. There are some repetitive level structures and a grindy meta-progression system, but if you have a dedicated group of friends to jump on voice chat with, it is well worth diving into the deep.
This review utilised an Xbox key provided by Tinsley PR and Abyssus is out now on Steam, Xbox and PlayStation.
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