Abyssal

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 [table][tr][th][i]I'm a Steam curator, you can [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43946907-Friendly-Nerd/]follow me[/url][/i][/th][/tr][/table]

Beautiful game in overall but with a bunch of bugs. It should be revised. Liked the cauldron

güzel

Abyssal is one of literally thousands of student projects infesting Steam. It's from DigiPen in Europe (Bilbao). While student projects tend to be better quality than most "amateur" made games, we must still question what value such projects have for gamers. As with all student projects, this isn't really a fully fleshed out game, it's just the result of an academic exercise, and as such it has much more limited value as a game than a professionally developed game would have. Educational institutions should not be using Steam as a dumping ground for homework assignments (especially if the students didn't even pass the course). Sure, it helps their marketing and helps the students feel good about themselves, but this is another case of a business putting themselves before the needs of gamers. This year the students made a 3D turn-based strategy title. You battle Eldritch-like creatures as a Monk using arcane magic and minions. The story centers on two warring brothers and their feud, involving a pact with abyssal creatures. The problem is that, of course, as a student project this isn't a fully fleshed out game. There's no save features. There's unskippable cutscenes and tutorials. There's a few bugs that will never be finished because student projects don't get maintained! Yet another reason why student projects are hard to recommend. And of course, it's short, and not really worth plodding through when you could be playing a product made for gamers instead of students building a portfolio. The graphics in this game are passable, but could be better. And while it's vital for any game to have impressive visuals (gaming is a visual medium, after all), there's more to a game than just the graphics. To be worth a gamers time, the game must match top tier visuals with top tier gameplay, and that's not happening here. You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality product, this comes across more as a delusion of grandeur than anything else. This agreement includes questionable requirements that may attempt to revoke consumer law protections that gamers expect to have, which is also highly problematic. Developers must learn they are here to serve gamers, not control them. I had my cat walk over the keyboard while the EULA was displaying, which fixed that problem for me. On the matter of pricing and value for gamers, most "free" games on Steam aren't really free. There's often nasty mobile app cash shops, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, or any other number of shady pricing schemes that could mislead gamers, but in this case I'm glad to say this really does appear to be a fully free game. Nothing demonstrates a developers belief in themselves and their work than giving it away without any remuneration. This is a service to themselves, and the gaming industry, and should be applauded. Of course, just because something is free, doesn't necessarily mean it's valuable, or something you might want to spend your time on. Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 5 concurrent players... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? This is a "maybe" experience... if you have a lot of free time on your hands and nothing else to do, why not? But for the purposes of a review, this isn't something I can say everyone must try. It's not quite there. Valve doesn't give us a "maybe" option in reviews, but if they did, that's what I'd choose for this.

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.

Игра 'Abyssal' – это атмосферное и захватывающее приключение в глубинах неизведанного океана. Графика, выполненная в мрачных тонах, прекрасно передаёт гнетущее чувство изоляции и опасности, подстерегающей на каждом шагу. Сюжет не торопится раскрывать все карты, постепенно погружая игрока в мир таинственных существ и древних артефактов. Механика исследования довольно проста, но увлекательна: поиск ресурсов, улучшение подводной лодки, столкновения с враждебными обитателями. Отдельного внимания заслуживает звуковое сопровождение – жуткие звуки китов, эхо в замкнутых пространствах и напряжённая музыка создают неповторимую атмосферу ужаса. Однако, некоторым может показаться, что геймплей со временем становится немного однообразным, а недостаток динамичных событий делает игру скорее медитативной, нежели экшеном. Тем не менее, если вы любите игры с сильной атмосферой и готовы к медленному, но увлекательному исследованию, 'Abyssal' точно стоит вашего внимания. Поклонникам Subnautica и SOMA игра может прийтись по вкусу.

I really enjoyed being able to try this game. It is a fun experience and I recommend playing it if you like strategy games

gameplay https://youtu.be/4hsqGqjF6Mg