A story-focused single-player first-person shooter in 2026? I must be hallucinating. Luna Abyss is approximately a nine hour game with terrific art direction, an interesting, well-written story, great voice acting, and some satisfying bullet hell gameplay. It’s not exactly a beefy game, but it’s well-paced and does what it focuses on quite well, even though I wish it had a bit more to sink my teeth into. At the end of the day, this is a pretty impressive game that doesn’t wear out its welcome, while also adding some value to the first-person shooter pantheon.
Fawkes wakes up in a prison cell on the moon, her only companion is a giant robotic head coming out of the wall. The head, Ayla, tells her that she has a 9,000+ day prison sentence to fulfil and the only way out of it is to act as a Scout for the All-Father, who is the head of a strange church that controls the moon. Fawkes’ consciousness is then uploaded into a Scout and sets off to complete tasks. All is not as it seems, however, as the two of them get roped into some surprising mysteries, courtesy of another individual with ties to the All-Father.
The narrative seems somewhat inscrutable at first. Luna Abyss throws a great many terms at you without doling out vital context to make it all understandable. By the end, though, everything is mostly clear and the story does a very good job of unfolding. The dialogue is high quality and the voice acting fully matches it which very much assists the narrative, even if some of the details can obscure the world-building to a degree that makes it a bit less than digestible. The ending is also somewhat anticlimactic, but that doesn’t necessarily diminish anything, as the events still match up with the game’s tone and world.
Luna Abyss is a chapter-based first-person shooter that is completely linear, even if there are lots of things to find off the beaten path, including upgrades and tons of lore, all of which is surprisingly easy to miss. Gameplay is a mixture of platforming and shooting. Fawkes routinely finds new upgrades that assist her in both aspects, such as new weapons, new combat abilities, and plenty of new navigation abilities. By default, she finds a rifle early on that fires rapidly, but she quickly discovers a shotgun that breaks blue shields, a sniper rifle that breaks purple ones, and later, a missile launcher that can shoot locks simultaneously to open the path.
Combat is somewhat akin to modern Doom games. You’ll want to swap between weapons to get your DPS up, but the shotgun and sniper rifle both overheat quickly. On the default difficulty, the default rifle is mostly enough to get you through the game, but using all of your weapons is far more engaging. Due to enemies getting their shields, it’s best not to have your shotgun or sniper overheating just in case you need them. The game’s challenge level does veer toward the easy side on the normal difficulty for much of the campaign, though.
One of the main features here is that enemy projectiles are akin to a bullet hell game. You’re meant to keep moving to avoid them, but strafing is usually more than enough to accomplish this. It mostly all feels very manageable, although there’s no invulnerability after taking damage and you’ll find that your entire health bar can be depleted in the blink of an eye if too much fire hits you at once. It’s satisfying to swap between your weapons and take your foes out of play, though, especially considering a specific ability.
Once you get an enemy’s health down to a certain level (usually from using the rifle, as the shotgun and sniper are more likely to kill them outright), you can either kill them in a way that heals you some or make them explode into shrapnel that damages surrounding enemies. This was an excellent choice, as it both grants leniency to less-skilled players while making more-skilled ones extra effective. Making these calls in the heat of battle really adds a lot to the gameplay, as do the game’s movement options.
Fawkes eventually gets the ability to dash and double-jump, as well as possess different mechs, such as one on rails or a huge one with guns that can shoot down everything in its path. Some of these add some nifty platforming challenges, such as one that attaches itself to platforms at different angles. She can also manipulate certain platforms and the like. This makes the platforming in Luna Abyss quite variable and reminiscent, again, of modern Doom. It all plays very nicely and makes for some enjoyably paced gameplay.
It doesn’t hurt that the game is lovely to look at and runs quite well. My 3090 got a pretty constant 120 fps despite the amount of projectiles onscreen. The environments can also be incredibly huge and you’ll find yourself traipsing among lots and lots of space. However, I do wish there was an easier way to find the game’s collectibles. I ended up missing four of the game’s ten health increases, as well as two of its four weapon upgrades, which irked me. You can replay chapters to try and hunt most of these down, as the chapter select screen tells you all you’re missing.
After eight or nine hours, Luna Abyss rolls credits and you unlock nothing. No extra combat challenges or New Game+ are present. While this isn’t a huge deal, I wish every combat game had the option for players to dive in and experiment more with a game’s full arsenal. This title has a very satisfactory campaign and story, though, so it’s hard to be too upset about this. After all, a game that leaves you wanting more is better than one that wears out its welcome.
Luna Abyss: The game may not be super long or have much replay value, but it offers a strong campaign, a terrific presentation, and excellent pacing. – Andrew Farrell
Your next read:
