Abyssal
Abyssal is a 3D turn-based Strategy Game in which a Monk, wielder of arcane magic, along with his minions, must fight hordes of Eldritch-like creatures.
Two brothers, Alaric and Archivald were meant to inherit the leadership to their cult. But Alaric, full of greed tried to kill Archivald to withhold all the power, forcing him to run away and killing his subordinates in the attempt. Archivald returns to revive his friends and on his way to seek revenge, finds that Alaric made a deal with abyssal creatures that have now infested the whole city. They will now have to defeat these evil forces to restore the balance and finally get their revenge.
Features:
- Turn-based strategy in a 3D Isometric view
- Explore an array of characters: Mages, Cauldron, and more!
- Use magic to open your way into the Abyss!
This game was developed as a student project at DigiPen Institute of Technology and was created for educational purposes only. Please check out our publisher page for more information.
Game Discussion
Steam User 3
Easily recommended for fans of turn-based tactics.
+Visuals/art style
+Cinematics
+Turn-based
+Tactical battles
+Intuitive controls
+Control up to 4 characters
+Variety of abilities
+Developed by students
+Free
-No voice
-Minimal story
-Needs more variety in objectives
-No level ups/character progression/customization
-Limitations in zoom/camera
Steam User 1
This isn't my favourite student project I've checked out, but it's still pretty solid keeping what it is in mind. The turn based combat would be too basic if this were a full game, with no sort of character building or gear system, but for an hour long game it's fine. The enemy spawners were pretty annoying, as soon as that mechanic was introduced I stopped trying to clear each map and instead planned out how to protect the main character Archivald as I used him to run to the exit. While I appreciated the layer of tactics and strategic thinking this added, and I now realise that may have been intentional, it also seems to further reinforce the feeling that the combat is just a chore to get through rather than the main draw.
The little bit of story that's here is fine, it works and you don't exactly need a ton of depth for such a short game. The setting and creature designs are pretty cool, the cinematics are fairly well done, and the music is great. I don't know if it was composed for the game or is royalty free work available online, but it perfectly compliments the overall vibe. Additionally, the game runs really well. I like to check out student projects whenever they look even remotely interesting and most stress out my computer when the specs on the store page imply that shouldn't be an issue, so it was nice to find one that seems to be pretty optimized despite what I'm sure was a short development cycle.
I think I saw some screen tearing, I know the vsync setting straight up didn't work for me, and controlling the camera was a nightmare. It felt like there was a 50/50 shot of either success or failure when I tried it. The complete lack of any kind of cinematic or even a little bit of text popping up after finishing the game was kind of insane. Maybe the devs ran out of time and needed to submit whatever they had to be graded, but something to actually inform the player they finished the game is necessary in my opinion. As is, one could be forgiven for thinking the game just crashed to the main menu. Overall, not bad.
Steam User 1
I like the idea, the gameplay and the design and music. Really enjoyed the last two and a half of the four hours I spent with this.
BUT the fact that I couldn't save my progress, that there is no way to skip cutscenes and tutorials when you start anew (and in my case therefore would have to play everything again including said unskippable inlays if I still wanted to see the finale and the payoff... which I won't do then) and that the controls are pretty buggy, so you sometimes have to click somewhere before they work again or you have to tab out of the game... All in all those minor inconveniences made the experience way more annoying/frustrating than it had to be. I know this is just the demo and free, but for me to buy the actual game, these would have to be fixed first.
Oh and another review reminded me: being able to zoom closer into the action would've also been nice to have, but it does not completely hinder the enjoyment fortunately.
Steam User 1
6/10 TBS with a minions party
TLDR: it's a nice student project with good visuals and audio. Yet the lack of QoL features and the clumsy controls make it hard to play
Good:
+ free
+ nice, even if low-poly models. Nice looks overall
+ thematic music
So-so:
+/- can't rotate the camera or zoom in/out. So it's unclear why this game even have to be 3D if the view is fixed
Bad:
- the cursor has an additional picture above it showing the currently selected ability. It's confusing and often makes you click below the objects you wanted to click because you can't exactly see the hotspot of the cursor. The extra picture should have been shown maybe on the right of the cursor, not above it
- hard to see HP of the characters
- can't see how far enemies can move, what abilities they have, or their attack range. Also, tiles on the ground are only visible within your movement or attack range. So, you can't really plan ahead and take into account the "danger zone" of enemies
- no numbers in tooltips of abilities. What amount of dmg a spell does? How much healing heals? It's not really a strategy game if there are no numbers
I'm a Steam curator, you can follow me
Steam User 0
Interesting ending