End Of Abyss review – a creepy dollhouse take on Resident Evil and The Thing
PlayStation 5 (version played), Xbox, PC; Epic Games Publishing This fetchingly presented horror game brings style and scares, but overextends itself with repetition A small band of soldiers enters an abandoned facility, where puckered flesh sprouts from cold steel. It’s a promising but familiar start to a sci-fi horror story, with heavy overtones of Alien and The Thing. Neither of those, though, were so … dinky.…
Key points
- End of Abyss is a survival-horror game for PlayStation 5, Xbox and PC, published by Epic Games Publishing.
- It uses a dollhouse-like top-down view reminiscent of PS1-era Resident Evil, with dark, foggy visuals.
- The game layers Dark Souls, Metroid and Hollow Knight elements but repetition and confusing controls make it overlong.
End of Abyss is a new survival-horror game from developer Section 9, published by Epic Games Publishing. It is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox and PC, with the review based on the PS5 version. The game begins with a small band of soldiers entering an abandoned facility where fleshy growths cover cold steel, a setup that echoes Alien and The Thing.
What sets it apart is its scale: the facility is presented like a model-village version of The Thing's Outpost 31, viewed from above. The bobble-headed hero occupies a tiny part of the screen, while most of the view is swallowed by fog or total darkness. This cute yet eerie style links it to Limbo, Inside and Little Nightmares.
Familiar scares in miniature
End of Abyss plays like a shrunken Resident Evil, using fixed, CCTV-like camera angles to frame each scene. The game fills its dioramas with carefully placed bodies, viscera and glowing items, then ambushes players as monsters peel out of the dark. Combat involves backpedalling and firing a pistol while hoping for enough ammo, though the control scheme is confounding, with reload mapped to the right thumbstick.
Contrary to its fetchingly diminutive presentation, End of Abyss might be just too big for its own good.
— The Guardian
Too big for its own good
The game also borrows from Dark Souls, Metroid and Hollow Knight, adding a large, complex facility with one-way doors and interconnected zones. The slow-moving character struggles against even shambling zombies, and the gloomy art style makes rooms hard to tell apart. A pause-screen map is prone to confusion over locked doors, leading to heavy backtracking.
Repeated visits wear down the staged scares, which eventually feel like a fairground ghost train. After 12 hours, the reviewer reached the final boss with much of the map still greyed out and felt exhausted, with little desire to see the unseen half of the game.
