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As announced during the Gamescom Opening Night Live pre-show today, the gorgeous fantasy beat-'em-up Absolum is due to launch across PC, Nintendo Switch, PS5, and PS4 on October 9. After a bit of hands-on time with a new preview build, I'm even more interested in the game's blend of classic beat-'em-up action and modern roguelike stylings.
There's quite a pedigree here, as developers Dotemu and Guard Crush Games previously collaborated on the absolutely sublime Streets of Rage 4, but Absolum expands on the old-school beat-'em-up format in some notable ways. It pulls from the roguelike genre as a whole, but you'll specifically find a lot of Hades DNA here in the character-filled home base you return to run after run, the way each room concludes with a big pickup or upgrade, and the gorgeous character art from animation studio Supamonks.
The Absolum devs have been citing influences like Golden Axe and Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara in press materials, and while the spirit of those classics lives here, there are some smart new gameplay tweaks, too. You can counter enemy attacks by either dashing forward into them or dodging away, opening a brief window to hit them with a counter attack – a "punish" attack, named in the fighting game style.
These counters and punishes open up a lot of defensive options, which makes getting hit feel like your fault – something that's not always a given in the beat-'em-up genre, which came to life as a means to the end of unabashed quarter-munching. But being able to actively fend off enemy attacks helps give Absolum another dimension to keep its brawling from becoming too repetitive.
Upgrades you pick up over the course of a run will boost your abilities, letting you build up status effects on enemies, or adding flame effects to your attacks after a successful dodge. I haven't spent enough time with the game to really get a great build together, but I can already see the possibilities. Building up stacks of tornado to continuously keep enemies spinning in the air? That just sounds like a good time.
Each character in Absolum also feels very distinct, and that includes the newly-revealed frog wizard, Brome. He's built around zoning, which marks a pretty unique playstyle for a beat-'em-up character, offering big magical blasts, trap runes you can place on the ground, and an arcane pulse that creates a big offensive bubble strike. I think my heart is likely to lie with Cider, the mobile rogue archetype, once the final game is out, but Brome feels like the perfect backup character to bring into co-op.
I've been keeping a close eye on Absolum since it was revealed earlier this year, and we won't have much longer to wait to see how it turns out in full, with its launch on October 9. Fans of the beat-'em-up genre haven't feasted like this in years.
Absolum is pulling from some of the best roguelike games out there.
