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On May 21, developer Kwalee Labs released Luna Abyss on PC (Steam and Epic), PS5, and Xbox Series X, quickly racking up very positive user reviews across all platforms and reaching 80 on Metacritic.
Billed as a story-driven single-player FPS with bullet hell combat not unlike recent PS5 exclusive Saros, Luna Abyss has been on my Steam wishlist for months – and has been around for years – as it echoes some of my favorite shooters. After seeing it again at GDC, I was eager to chat with the devs about it, and Kwalee co-founder Hollie Emery tells me the game's been in the works since mid-2019.
Luna Abyss began with Emery and co-founders Benni and Harry, and peaked at around 25 active developers between "a lean core team" supported by contractors. It really resurfaced with the most recent Steam Next Fest event, which saw its demo showered in positive reviews. "That definitely surprised us," Emery says of the event. "As the first person shooter genre is a particularly competitive space, we’re really happy that our community is enjoying the game so much."
Like most game journalists, I am cursed to invent embarrassing portmanteaus that go nowhere, so in my head I've been calling Luna Abyss "Doom Returnal" for a while. There's just something about the movement and the projectiles that reminds me of both Doom Eternal and Returnal, and I was powerless to fight my subconscious. On the game's DNA, Emery says "there are certainly some truths to those comparisons," but casts a wider net.
'When [we] originally set off to create Luna we were heavily inspired by titles such as Nier Automata, Metroid Prime, Destiny, Halo and old school bullet-hell shooters - like Cave shooters," Emery says.
Melee-focused action RPG Nier: Automata may sound like an odd pick, but it is, beneath it all, a devout member of the Orb Dodging faction.
For my money, Destiny 2 (RIP) still has the best gunplay around, so any mention of Bungie's work is going to perk up my ears. The Metroid Prime and Halo nods stand out, too. The world of Luna Abyss is similarly monolithic; you play as a prisoner trapped in an illogical megastructure "that sprawls deep beneath the surface of the mimic moon Luna," per Kwalee's store blurb. "You are tasked with recovering forgotten technology from within the Abyss and the lost colony it consumed. Every move you make will be overseen by your artificial prison guard named Aylin."
Luna Abyss was obviously in the works before Returnal was announced, but Emery says "the entire development team devoured the experience, we have a lot of appreciation for the Housemarque title."
From Returnal, "we certainly learnt a lot" about how you could approach "a 3D bullet hell shooter, which drove us to refine and improve our own systems in combat," Emery adds. And there is, indeed, some Doom in the mix, especially in arena encounters. I'm always curious how game devs feel about other games, but try to stay cognizant of the fact that pulling out specific inspirations is often like trying to pull out individual strands from the tapestry of art influencing art. The setup for Luna Abyss is wholly unique, and the results speak for themselves.
Elsewhere in good bullet hell shooters, our Saros review calls Housemarque's latest a lean fusion of roguelike sci-fi action and eldritch horror that successfully remixes Returnal for a broader audience.
