[DRS] I've Entered The Abyss, Now How Do I Get Out?

The Abyss is a game created by sto4

Game: The Abyss

Maker: sto4

Type: Platformer

Pre-thoughts:

Dudki is here with another review, and today, I got an interesting one to talk about, The Abyss. This game was created by a user who I've liked for a long time, sto4! I have, as long as I can remember, always admired sto4's games and his overall game-making style. He has been my inspiration in many of my game ideas. He is truly a great creator and has earned himself quite a lot of features over the years. I first saw this game when it got on the featured list, but at that time, I didn't get too far into it. It was only because of my reviewing service, that I decided to really see what this game had to offer.

I didn't see anything special in the thumbnail. It wasn't really visually appealing to me. It looked kinda boring in my opinion, but since I knew who the creator was, I still had to give it a try. If this game were created by another user, I might not have wanted to play it as much as I had. I say that we just keep it at that and get on to the actual interesting stuff.

Review:

The Abyss really surprised me to be honest. I have actually never been a big fan of black and white puzzle games. I've always thought that they were too confusing, but this one was different. The Abyss featured many unique puzzles and really shows off sto4's excellent game-making skills. It is tricky to complete and forces the player to think, which I really like about this game. What I really like is how you have to go back and fourth to find and get to your objectives. Many of the puzzle games I see featured lately, are very crowded and usually have one main path for the player to take, while The Abyss features wide-open spaces and leaves much more room for interesting gameplay. What I also really love about this game is that it is so long. Most puzzle-games nowadays leave you with around 5-6 minutes of gameplay, while The Abyss could be over 10 minutes long.

The puzzles of this game was the best part. I loved the puzzles that sto4 had placed in this game. Even though I have seen some of them before, he figured out some useful ways of making them unique and seem like a whole new one. The way sto4 utilizes certain tactics and power-ups is brilliant. They were nicely put together, and every part of the game were designed to make these puzzles interesting. This game really stood out from most of sto4's puzzle-platformers, and he has done a great job in making this game feel different from his other games.

As far as I saw, The Abyss didn't really contain any traps, which I'd say is a dissapointment. I always like I few traps in games to surprise the player, or just force them to restart. Now, since this was such a long game, sto4 may have tried to avoid placing too many traps, so players wouldn't have to restart after 10 minutes of hard work, and I would also understand that, however, I do believe a little more effort could have been put into this aspect of the game.

Since this is an all-round puzzle-platformer, the game's obviously not bound to be filled with enemies and alot of action. Although many puzzle games have this nowadays, this game did not, and focused more on challenging the player with tricky puzzles. Come to think of it, even the few enemies that were present in this game, actually also acted as a part of a puzzle. It was very important that you made sure to use the enemies the right way.

Sto4 tend not to focus too much on the scenery in his games. Most of his games contains little to no scenery, which I personally think could be improved. I love looking at the scenery people put in their games, and I think sto4 should try to put a little more effort into his scenery. Of course, with a black and white game, it's practically impossible to make scenery, since you can't see any of it, but for his other games mostly, he should try to make some nice-looking scenery.

The placement was part of what made the puzzles so interesting. It really played a big role in The Abyss. Sto4 knows how to make good placement. He knows where power-ups will be needed, where enemies will be most effective, and where puzzles would be good to place. I honestly can't say anything bad about the placement. From what I have seen, sto4 has excellent placement in most of his games, including The Abyss.

Pros/Cons

Pros:

Gameplay: Overall, the gameplay was pretty neat and exciting. It had some great puzzles, and was very fun to play.

Puzzles: Very good puzzles were featured in this game. You can tell that much thought and consideration have been put into making these puzzles.

Placement: Great placement in this game, which helped make various parts of the game much better.

Cons:

Thumbnail: Very boring thumbnail. In my opinion, it isn't anything special.

Traps: Little to no traps were presented in this game. Having more traps could have made the game a little better.

Action: This wasn't anything near an action game, so I honestly can't judge this too hard.

Scenery: The game didn't have that much scenery, but like I said, this was a black and white game, but in general, sto4's games needs more scenery.

Ratings:

Gameplay: 4/5

Difficulty: 4/5

Action: 0.5/5

Puzzles: 5/5

Traps: 1/5

Scenery: 3.5/5

Placement: 5/5

Lag: 1.5/5

Creativity: 3.5/5

Overall: 3.5/5

So, there you have it. To wrap it up, I will say that The Abyss was a great game, featuring a lot of interesting puzzles, and I would definitely recommend this game to other players to try out.

Feature-worthy?

This game is featured already, and I am happy that jackjoshseb featured it, because it is truly a feature-worthy game. It is different from most puzzle games out there right now, and it's nice to see some diversity here.