Longtime readers know that I love roguelikes, so when I saw Relic Abyss on a local forum, I immediately put it on my list of games to keep an eye on. They released a demo recently, so I tried it out for a bit and I’m already hooked!
Let’s dig a little deeper into what I’m loving so far, some points for improvement, and stuff to look forward to…
A Chunky Demo
First thing’s first, the game’s already surprisingly loaded for a demo. It currently only features a story mode, which does a pretty good job of teaching the basics without just dumping it all onto the player.
Now, as somebody who has already played a ton of games in the genre, a lot of this isn’t new to me, but I appreciate the effort they put in to kinda ease in newer players.
I purposefully played a bit carelessly just to see what would happen after each death early on. As expected, new meta-progression systems and playable characters started appearing in the hub area, and there are even NPCs to meet throughout your runs!
Even closing and reopening the game can trigger some story beats. I just discovered who the final playable character of the demo would be by reopening it, so there’s that.
Gear, Relics, and More
Relic Abyss features equippable items that you can get from chests that drop randomly in your run. These come in varying rarities and provide you with bonus stats while worn.
The catch is that some of them are only usable by the appropriate classes. For example, the rogue can use a dagger, but they won’t be able to equip a staff. You can also upgrade these by speaking with the cute and cuddly cat smith, Wilson.
Aside from that, you gain various perks and relics/spells whenever you level up. It’s your standard bullet heaven leveling system, so if you’ve played one of these before, you’ll know exactly how this works.
You also get stat points to allocate with every level. This allows you to adjust your build throughout a run, which I’d imagine gets pretty nutty when you start playing with higher tier items and stronger base stats.
Want to stack attack speed? Knock yourself out. Need more health? Pump up vitality!
In a way, this feels like a competent blend of Halls of Torment and Vampire Survivors. The latter might feel like a cheap comparison to make, but the chest opening animation just screams “this is our main inspiration”, and I’m all for it.
A Few Things to Polish
Although the demo has enough content in it to last you several hours of repeat runs of the first map, there’s definitely still stuff that the devs can improve on.
For instance, the lack of an auto-aim feature may be a bit of a turn off for some. I was a bit surprised to see that there wasn’t any option for it, but it isn’t a deal breaker. It’d be a nice QoL though, especially since aiming can feel wonky when you’re dealing with projectiles that fire in bursts.
The random events that spawn bushes to lock you in can also be a bit too punishing. For example, a maze popped up at the 18:30 mark, and it’s extremely tight. I lost what was a good run up to that point because my rogue just didn’t have any space to deal with the horde of tanky enemies.
There’s also a glaring issue with various spelling and grammatical errors. It’s nothing a bit of proofreading can’t fix, so I hope they give it a quick editing pass eventually. Stuff like “we’re worked”, “enemeis” and “I’m go by” stick out a lot, at least to me. None of that affects the gameplay though!
EDIT (6/4/25, literally the morning after I wrote this): They just released an update that hopefully fixed the issue some people (myself included) had with the hitboxes feeling a bit off. You can also dash at the hub area now, yay! Did some testing myself, and combat definitely feels a lot better now.
Wrapping Things Up
Minor issues aside, Relic Abyss is a promising roguelike that has a diverse set of features which allow you to fulfill that power fantasy of mowing down tons of enemies on your lonesome.
Beneath the cute exterior are systems that let you create a monster murdering machine, and I look forward to seeing how the full game will feel after several hours of playtime. There’s still plenty of content unavailable in the demo, including a ton of other unlockable characters.
I always love turning games like this into an incomprehensible mess of projectiles once I’ve progressed far enough, just like I did in Heretic’s Fork. It definitely helps that there are already abilities in this game that do exactly that!
As far as I know, there isn’t a release date for it yet, so add it to your wishlist if this all sounds interesting to you. I sure as hell did, and that’s before the demo even came out.