Phantom Abyss

Phantom Abyss is a great roguelike platformer that shines on the Steam Deck without much compromise.

If the tile set was larger, the randomness of the Daily and Abyss modes could have been enough to hook me for dozens of hours, but even though it lost me by the end, I enjoyed the adventures that Phantom Abyss provided.

Phantom Abyss remains fun for a while, a challenging adventure that is as much multiplayer as playing TrackMania with its characteristic ghost cars is, an acknowledged choice that nonetheless makes the game infinitely more interesting than if it were a fully solo-driven experience. But at a certain point, after several runs, it finally hits you – temple running is quite repetitive, the overall functionality of the traps isn’t that diverse, and the excitement is vanishing. That’s the actual curse of the game, a core loop that needs you to realize that short sessions are the best way to go about...

There’s something about first-person platformer games that get me excited. Ghostrunner (and its superb sequel), as well as Neon White, are some of my favourite games of the past few years. They’re exciting games that do something wholly unique and interesting to create some memorable experience. Phantom Abyss is the latest first-person platformer from Devolver Digital, and despite some really interesting ideas, it does have some issues.

Phantom Abyss is a game that’s still fun in small doses, but technical issues and limited scope hold it back more than I would like.