Absolum, developed by Guard Crush Games and Supamonks and published by Dotemu, takes the structure of a roguelike and filters it through the lens of a side-scrolling beat-em-up, creating a loop that feels fast, responsive, and full of surprises. On paper, it sounds familiar, but in motion, it finds its own rhythm with the kind of intensity and creativity that makes it hard to put down.
That rhythm is a core part of the Absolum experience, from the way its story unfolds to how its world reacts to the choices that players make. Beneath its hand-drawn art and chaotic combat, Absolum builds a sense of discovery that makes every run feel like a brand-new adventure. It finds a way to be rewarding in both success and failure, with a lot of that coming down to the way it presents itself, as it invites players to push a little further each time just to see what the world will throw at them next.
Absolum Shapes Its Fantasy Through Conflict, Choice, and Charming Presentation
Absolum's gameplay loop is addictive, rewarding, and full of variety, but at the heart of the game's charm is its world and the overarching narrative that brings it to life. Set in the fantasy realm of Talamh, Absolum's world has been shattered by a cataclysm brought about by ambitious wizards. Using the chaos as a smokescreen, the Sun King Azra enslaved wizards through his Crimson Order and put loyal princes in charge of the realms he conquered. Now, as Azra's forces move to claim even more lands, the high enchantress Uchawi and a small group of rebels use magic to challenge his regime and defy his absolute power.
As players control one of Uchawi's four wizards, they step into the shoes of characters who are both feared and needed, mistrusted and essential. The tension within Absolum's world then becomes more palpable as players progress and witness firsthand the disdain Talamh's people have toward wizards for the destruction their ilk have caused. These four characters — Karl, Galandra, Cider, and Brome — put players right in the heart of the conflict, as they get to experience what it's like to be a hero as well as a pariah.
The story of Absolum isn't told in cutscenes, as those are few and far between and are reserved for the game's transitional sequences between levels and major events. Instead, Absolum tells its story through character dialogue and plenty of optional lore tidbits by Uchawi herself. While it's still a bit cryptic at times, it's accessible enough to ensure every choice players make in the game actually matters, which inadvertently serves the precarious political landscape well.
Speaking of choices, the story of a run in Absolum can change in an instant if players are reckless with their actions. For example, sauntering into a room filled with treasure that, while unlocked, looks like it's supposed to be left alone, can quickly turn an ally into an enemy. Even haphazardly breaking furniture can rob players of bonuses that might have helped them make more progress in their run. These moments are just a small part of what makes Absolum's world feel like a living, breathing organism that aims to surprise at every turn.
And surprise, it does, as no two runs in Absolum feel the same. The world evolves with each run, with new enemies, environments, boss encounters, and hazards that are introduced either at random or in response to the choices players make. In short, Absolum does its best to ensure players never have it figured out, but again, it's all a part of what makes the game's world feel like something worth seeing over and over again — and it even encourages failure if players want to see all the world has to offer.
It's all even more worth seeing thanks to its presentation. Absolum's hand-drawn comic-book art style and animation give every movement a fluid, storybook quality that makes its visuals both clean and clear. There's a sharpness to its outlines and color palette that fits perfectly with its fantasy tone, but what stands out most is how readable everything remains, even in the middle of chaotic fights. The art isn't just there to look good, but it also helps the gameplay feel more self-controlled. Then, backing up Absolum's visual presentation is one of the most memorable and diverse video game soundtracks in recent memory, bringing every new area to life in a cinematic way.
Again, Absolum's greatest strength is, without a doubt, its creativity and unpredictability. Compared to other popular roguelikes, Absolum very rarely feels like it's retreading the same ground in a run, even if I had failed a run prior to it. It helps that the game's map has dozens of different routes to take every time, with fresh encounters, interesting quests, and optional bosses that contribute a fair amount of lore to the game's worldbuilding.
A run in Absolum can also flesh out the world by potentially adding new NPCs to Uchawi's Hearth, the game's hub zone, who can offer upgrades to gameplay at a cost, as well as various forms of useful currency. Uchawi's Hearth is also the place where players can converse with these NPCs and the playable characters they don't currently have active, potentially unlocking new quests, including personal quests for each of the characters themselves. I managed to achieve 100% completion in Absolum after 33 hours, and even then, I felt like I was still encountering smile-inducing surprises.
Absolum Redefines the Roguelike Fight
As a roguelike, Absolum's core systems echo those of the genre's giants, like Hades. In fact, those who have played enough of Hades or its sequel should instantly grasp Absolum's roguelike gameplay loop without a hitch. Where it differs from Hades is in its offering of four distinct characters, each of whom has a unique playstyle. Karl is a heavy-hitting character who uses a blend of melee and ranged attacks to subdue his foes. Galandra is a swordfighter with close-range and wide-sweeping attacks.
Cider is a nimble thief who is primarily melee, but with a special emphasis on aerial combat. Finally, Brome is the magic-oriented character of the bunch who can deal melee damage with his staff but otherwise casts mostly ranged spells. I spent most of my time playing the game with Cider (played by Baldur's Gate 3's Samantha Beart), as I generally prefer faster characters, but Brome's ranged abilities and crowd control made him a hard one to pass up. I also found Karl to be one of the easiest characters in Absolum to play, primarily on account of his hybrid nature as a melee and ranged specialist.
In short, there is something here for players of just about any playstyle with Absolum's characters, and that is even further accentuated by each character's Arcana. As wizards, the four characters possess magical abilities called Arcana that are akin to the various weapon choices in Hades and Hades 2. As players deal damage during a run, they generate Mana, which can then be used to trigger these special abilities. When all is said and done, each character has access to six Arcana that are unique to them.
As players make their way through each run, they'll acquire Rituals, Inspirations, and Trinkets, each of which functions similarly to Hades' Boons and Keepsakes. Rituals are the equivalent of Hades' Boons in that they are tied to elemental affinities, and players gain access to new Rituals as they take the game's many branching paths and discover them. These are the heart of Absolum's combat, as there is a considerable amount of strategy that is required if players hope to make the most of them and succeed during a run. Inspirations, on the other hand, are active skills players can unlock for their character after a boss fight, and Trinkets are passive modifiers that can affect anything from the player's max health to the damage they can deal with throwable items.
The main goal of a run in Absolum is to collect Radiance, Crystals, and Imbued Fruit, as each one uniquely contributes toward progression. Radiance acts as character experience, in that, as players collect Radiance during a run by dealing damage and achieving high combo meters, they increase their Radiance Level. Each new Radiance Level then offers players either a Primordial Seed or an Imbued Fruit, with the former unlocking new Arcana and Inspirations for each character and the latter upgrading each of the game's eight Rituals.
Crystals, on the other hand, are spent on the Soul Tree back at Uchawi's Hearth to unlock and improve passive bonuses like increases to max health, companion and throwable damage, a higher percentage chance of finding rarer Trinkets, and revive tokens called "Mother's Grace." Once players unlock every obtainable by spending Primordial Seeds and Imbued Fruit, every Radiance Level from then on will reward them with crystals, which can even be spent on Trinkets at Uchawi's Hearth before players start a new run.
These mechanics are fairly typical for a roguelike game like Absolum, but its side-scrolling beat-em-up approach is ultimately what distinguishes it in the genre. As opposed to the more common top-down view (or isometric, in Hades' case), Absolum opts for the side-scrolling approach of games like Dead Cells, but it's the beat-em-up style of its gameplay that makes it unlike most roguelikes. Enemies often flood the screen in waves, encouraging players to string together combos, juggle foes, and manage positioning within tight spaces. Everything operates on both an X and Y axis as well, making positioning even more crucial.
Absolum Tests Skill, Patience, and Precision
This is, in fact, where things can become very challenging in Absolum. Learning to discern when an attack will be wide-sweeping across both axes or on the X axis alone is all part of the experience, but even then, avoiding them can sometimes feel impossible. It's not, though, and that's what makes the educational aspect of Absolum's gameplay loop so fulfilling. Similarly to what's expected from a soulslike game, learning enemy attack patterns is something that every run contributes to, and so long as players maintain their awareness of what's happening on the screen without attempting to button-mash their way through, every encounter will trigger a muscle memory they didn't know they had gained.
There is a major weakness that comes with Absolum's side-scrolling, multi-axes, beat-em-up nature, and it manifests in the game's most chaotic moments — which occur rather frequently at later stages in the game. Sometimes, there are so many enemies on the screen and so much is happening that the player's character can get lost in the chaos. Since success in Absolum depends on both positioning and timing, then, these moments can feel a bit unfair. That feeling is rather fleeting, however, as the rest of the game, though it might feel indomitable at first, manages a pacing clearly intended to make players feel like they are evolving alongside its ever-changing world.
Absolum gets increasingly difficult after every run, failed or not, with new and more challenging foes appearing at times and in places players would never expect. It's designed to be continuously challenging for players, even when they feel they've mastered a character, or they believe they have the perfect build of Rituals, Inspirations, and Trinkets. There are no moments of invulnerability during a dodge, and deflecting attacks not only relies on impeccable timing, but even attempting one requires players to dash directly into their enemies, thereby increasing the risk.
That being said, Absolum is not without accessibility features for those who find it to be too difficult for their taste. It doesn't have a traditional difficulty modifier, and instead offers players Assist Options where damage received and damage dealt can be altered, with the possibility of bringing damage received down to 0% and damage dealt up to 500%. Part of me wishes damage received would have a higher minimum and damage dealt would have a lower maximum, just to maintain the game's challenge for all players, but it's clear that the developer just wants players to have fun with its game, making Assist Options more like "fun" modifiers.
Absolum excels from a performance standpoint, as I encountered absolutely zero bugs, technical glitches, and frame rate issues during the 33 hours I spent with it. While the game's visual style and graphics understandably don't demand a lot of power, there is still occasionally so much happening on the screen at one time that you would think performance would dip — but it never did. Everything in Absolum runs as smooth as butter, and even the load times are so short they're basically non-existent.
Absolum Stands Among the Roguelike Genre's Best
Absolum is one of those rare roguelikes that feels like it knows exactly what it wants to be, even if it's not ashamed to imitate games like Hades in many ways. Its world is intriguing with its characters and lore, its combat is punishing but rewards patience and persistence, and every run feels like a whole new experience. Even after dozens of hours, the mix of beat-em-up mechanics and roguelike structure still surprises. It's challenging, fulfilling, and full of personality, and the more time players spend with it, the more they will realize that Absolum's magic extends beyond the wizards themselves.
WHERE TO PLAY
- Number of Players
- 1-2 players
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC
- Genre(s)
- Roguelite, Beat 'Em Up
- Deeply rewarding roguelike progression
- Distinct characters with unique playstyles
- Gorgeous hand-drawn visual design
- Reactive world full of surprises
- Occasional visual combat chaos
Absolum is out now on PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch, and PS4/PS5. The Best War Games was provided a PC code for the purposes of this review.