There were more souls-likes than I could muster the interest in at Summer Game Fest 2025. I've never been one to enjoy the genre in most cases anyway, and seeing how many games were leaning into gameplay loops of dodge-roll showdowns with gigantic, spongey bosses had me checked out at times during the various showcases over the past week. But I played one game that borrows from the genre and didn't turn me away. End of Abyss takes a few touchstones from games like Dark Souls, ties it in with a Little-Nightmares-in-space aesthetic, and brings it all together in a cleverly creepy twin-stick shooter.
End of Abyss comes from Section 9 Interactive, a new studio created in part by former Tarsier Studio developers, the team behind Little Nightmares and its sequel. The Little Nightmares influence can definitely be felt in End of Abyss. Though the enemy and world design are much different, trading the stuff of childhood night terrors for coldly blue-tinted isolation akin to a sci-fi horror story, there's something about it that feels familiar. Maybe it's the nameless, voiceless character being chased by fleshy monsters. Or maybe it's their brightly colored jacket--here a lime green as opposed to Little Nightmare's yellow raincoat.
Luckily, the protagonist in End of Abyss can defend themselves, unlike those in Tarsier's games. Using a pistol with unlimited ammo, or other found weapons like a shotgun I discovered in my play session, the game's twin-stick shooting felt well-implemented. It wasn't very sticky, which I liked, as it gave it an anxiety-inducing effect. Missing shots meant the enemies were able to close the distance and caused me to dodge them, either out of the room so I could create a bottleneck in a doorway, or just catch my breath. Some enemies grew long, giraffe-like necks, which they swung at me with sneakily far reach. Others came in packs of several small bugs that would jump on me, causing me to shake them off and book it, or try to knife them on their approach.
The souls-like inspirations can be felt in a few ways some players will be familiar with. For one, the map feels circular in that satisfying way From Software and its lineage utilize a lot. Exploring every space felt key, as it allowed me to find hidden caches of weapon or suit upgrade materials, but just as important, I could unlock passageways that helped me loop back around to earlier areas.
Because the enemies respawn when you save at a mysterious type of pod--not to be confused with a traditional bonfire--these shortcuts helped evade the same sequence of enemies each time I came back to the area to save or upgrade my character. There are no corpse runs, but the game will punish you for failing to save manually, so these shortcuts back to a safe haven will be vital for survival.
I got to take on a huge boss monster too, which, despite its sizeable health bar, didn't prove too tricky given my abundance of shotgun ammo I'd crafted by then, but I expect this was a kindness afforded to me in the demo only, and in the full game, I'd have to scramble a bit more. The boss battle felt soulsy too, where each hit devastated me, so I could only afford to mess up very few times. I'm hoping the game can strike a nice balance between being challenging yet not brutal, and co-creator Mattias Ottvall told me that's the team's vision as well.
From what I've played so far, the game's best attribute is its atmosphere. There is a chilling stillness to the world. Enemies often stand around, or even seem to lie in wait, until you approach them, sometimes sneak-attacking from behind a doorway or out of a shadow. This leaves you alone much of the time, unsure of what's around each corner. Your scanner device, which can locate secret caches or puzzle areas, echoes through the ghostly halls of the alien world. I suspect the game won't care to answer many questions about where and when the game takes place, and I'm perfectly happy to go along for that ride into the unknown.
It's not exactly a horror game, Ottvall told me, but the game has inched closer to that identity during development because its small team featured mostly artwork-focused developers. The mechanics of the game naturally shifted to adapt to the art-driven game. That was an interesting wrinkle for me to learn, as it suggests that the game may have looked quite different if the balance between gameplay designers and world designers was skewed the other way. Instead, we got the icy-blue End of Abyss you can see in the trailer above, which is definitely more up my alley than a demanding combat-first game the devs may have once been targeting.
As someone who loves Little Nightmares, enjoys twin-stick shooters, and doesn't care for souls-likes, I feel what I saw so far is enough of those first two elements to allow me not to get frustrated by its third element. End of Abyss seems to be the start of an intriguing new studio. It's coming to Epic Games Store, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5 in 2026.
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End of Abyss comes from Section 9 Interactive, a new studio created in part by former Tarsier Studio developers, the team behind Little Nightmares and its sequel. The Little Nightmares influence can definitely be felt in End of Abyss. Though the enemy and world design are much different, trading the stuff of childhood night terrors for coldly blue-tinted isolation akin to a sci-fi horror story, there's something about it that feels familiar. Maybe it's the nameless, voiceless character being chased by fleshy monsters. Or maybe it's their brightly colored jacket--here a lime green as opposed to Little Nightmare's yellow raincoat.
Luckily, the protagonist in End of Abyss can defend themselves, unlike those in Tarsier's games. Using a pistol with unlimited ammo, or other found weapons like a shotgun I discovered in my play session, the game's twin-stick shooting felt well-implemented. It wasn't very sticky, which I liked, as it gave it an anxiety-inducing effect. Missing shots meant the enemies were able to close the distance and caused me to dodge them, either out of the room so I could create a bottleneck in a doorway, or just catch my breath. Some enemies grew long, giraffe-like necks, which they swung at me with sneakily far reach. Others came in packs of several small bugs that would jump on me, causing me to shake them off and book it, or try to knife them on their approach.
The souls-like inspirations can be felt in a few ways some players will be familiar with. For one, the map feels circular in that satisfying way From Software and its lineage utilize a lot. Exploring every space felt key, as it allowed me to find hidden caches of weapon or suit upgrade materials, but just as important, I could unlock passageways that helped me loop back around to earlier areas.
Because the enemies respawn when you save at a mysterious type of pod--not to be confused with a traditional bonfire--these shortcuts helped evade the same sequence of enemies each time I came back to the area to save or upgrade my character. There are no corpse runs, but the game will punish you for failing to save manually, so these shortcuts back to a safe haven will be vital for survival.
I got to take on a huge boss monster too, which, despite its sizeable health bar, didn't prove too tricky given my abundance of shotgun ammo I'd crafted by then, but I expect this was a kindness afforded to me in the demo only, and in the full game, I'd have to scramble a bit more. The boss battle felt soulsy too, where each hit devastated me, so I could only afford to mess up very few times. I'm hoping the game can strike a nice balance between being challenging yet not brutal, and co-creator Mattias Ottvall told me that's the team's vision as well.
From what I've played so far, the game's best attribute is its atmosphere. There is a chilling stillness to the world. Enemies often stand around, or even seem to lie in wait, until you approach them, sometimes sneak-attacking from behind a doorway or out of a shadow. This leaves you alone much of the time, unsure of what's around each corner. Your scanner device, which can locate secret caches or puzzle areas, echoes through the ghostly halls of the alien world. I suspect the game won't care to answer many questions about where and when the game takes place, and I'm perfectly happy to go along for that ride into the unknown.
It's not exactly a horror game, Ottvall told me, but the game has inched closer to that identity during development because its small team featured mostly artwork-focused developers. The mechanics of the game naturally shifted to adapt to the art-driven game. That was an interesting wrinkle for me to learn, as it suggests that the game may have looked quite different if the balance between gameplay designers and world designers was skewed the other way. Instead, we got the icy-blue End of Abyss you can see in the trailer above, which is definitely more up my alley than a demanding combat-first game the devs may have once been targeting.
As someone who loves Little Nightmares, enjoys twin-stick shooters, and doesn't care for souls-likes, I feel what I saw so far is enough of those first two elements to allow me not to get frustrated by its third element. End of Abyss seems to be the start of an intriguing new studio. It's coming to Epic Games Store, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5 in 2026.
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