Abyss The Forgotten Past

Abyss The Forgotten Past is a 2D side-scrolling platformer with RPG elements set in a fantasy world of pixel art, where players control Leonnor on a journey to rediscover his past after an unfortunate event. The game features collectible items, increasing difficulty, puzzles, magical weapons (including Excalibur), and a mysterious plot involving monsters, celestial beings, and self-discovery.

Abyss The Forgotten Past: Review

Introduction

In the vast, pixelated tapestry of indie gaming, few projects embody the tantalizing promise and crushing disappointment of the Early Access era more profoundly than Abyss The Forgotten Past. Released by OWG Studios in January 2021, this 2D platformer-RPG hybrid promised a sweeping journey of self-discovery set in a world teeming with celestial beings, magic swords, and enigmatic mysteries. Its narrative—adapted from a tabletop RPG—centered on Leonnor, a protagonist thrust into an odyssey to reclaim his fractured identity after a cataclysmic event. Yet, despite its alluring premise, charming pixel art, and ambitious scope, Abyss ultimately succumbs to the perils of premature release and fractured development. This review dissects its legacy as a cautionary tale of ambition undermined by technical instability and broken promises, arguing that while it flashes moments of brilliance, it remains an unfinished artifact in the annals of gaming history.

Development History & Context

OWG Studios emerged as a small, passionate developer with a vision to merge classic 2D platforming mechanics with deep RPG systems. Their narrative blueprint directly translated a homebrewed tabletop role-playing game into an interactive medium, emphasizing player-driven discovery and world-building. Technologically, the game began life in Clickteam Fusion 2.5, a choice that constrained its potential. This engine, while accessible, proved inadequate for the game’s design, leading to performance bottlenecks, frequent crashes, and clunky controls—a fact developers later acknowledged in their 2021 roadmap. The shift to Unity was announced as a panacea, promising 4K support, solid gameplay, and achievements. However, this transition signaled a deeper truth: Abyss was a product of evolving ambition amid limited resources.

The gaming landscape of 2021 was saturated with indie darlings like Hollow Knight and Dead Cells, setting a high bar for polish and execution. Abyss entered this milieu during a peak for Early Access, where community feedback was paramount. Yet, OWG’s reliance on player suggestions for feature expansion—such as additional chapters—exposed a lack of cohesive design. The studio’s partnership with publisher Sedoc LLC provided initial traction, with a free prologue (December 2020) serving as a loss leader to build hype. By July 2021, however, Sedoc’s contract was terminated, and OWG Studios went solo, abandoning planned multi-platform support (Mac, Linux, Android) and slashing language options from eight to just English and Portuguese. This retreat underscored the financial and logistical strains plaguing the project, leaving Abyss stranded in limbo.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

The plot of Abyss The Forgotten Past revolves around Leonnor’s existential pilgrimage. After an undefined “unfortunate event” erases his memories, he traverses a fantasy realm populated by monsters, magic, and celestial beings. The narrative unfolds through vignettes of rediscovery, with twists like “things are not always what they seem” hinting at duality and deception. Characters, though sparsely defined, include ethereal celestial entities whose dialogue emphasizes mystery over exposition. The story’s roots in tabletop RPG manifest in player-driven choice—minor decisions subtly influencing quest outcomes—but this depth is stymied by disjointed pacing and unresolved subplots.

Thematically, Abyss grapples with identity and amnesia. Leonnor’s quest mirrors the player’s own journey into the unknown, with the world acting as a mirror reflecting fragmented truths. The juxtaposition of “silly” yet “smart” enemies underscores a critique of superficial judgment, while the inclusion of legendary artifacts like Excalibur symbolizes the search for purpose. Yet, these themes remain largely unexplored, buried under repetitive fetch quests and a climax that feels abrupt and unearned. The narrative’s potential—rooted in real-world RPG improvisation—is ultimately wasted on a framework too fragmented to cohere.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

Core Loop & Combat: At its heart, Abyss blends side-scrolling platforming with RPG progression. Players navigate linear stages, battling skeletons and fantastical foes using an array of weapons—standard swords, magical armaments, and the iconic Excalibur. Combat emphasizes timing and positioning, with enemies exhibiting surprising AI (e.g., flanking maneuvers), but is undermined by floaty physics and inconsistent hit detection. The promised “increasing difficulty” curve feels uneven, with early spikes followed by tedious grinds.

Character Progression & Systems: RPG elements like leveling, inventory management, and weapon forging add depth but suffer from imbalance. Forging, for instance, requires scarce resources, making late-game upgrades feel punitive. The skill tree, promised in promotional material, is notably absent in the final build, reducing progression to stat boosts rather than meaningful choices. UI evolves during Early Access, with a revamped main menu and options screen, but inventory management remains clunky, and critical mechanics—like platform dismounting—require unintuitive input combos (e.g., “Down Arrow + Spacebar”).

Innovation & Flaws: The game’s ambition lies in its synthesis of genres, but execution falters. Puzzles are simplistic, and “multiple levels” touted in marketing are limited to rehashed environments. Controller support is partial, and bugs—from collision exploits to save corruption—marred the experience. The pivot to Unity addressed some issues but introduced new ones, like unstable frame rates. Ultimately, Abyss feels like a blueprint rather than a finished product, its systems at odds with each other.

World-Building, Art & Sound

Setting & Atmosphere: The game’s fantasy world—dubbed “Alton’s Island” in the prologue—is a realm of crumbling ruins, ice caverns, and celestial temples. While expansive on paper, it lacks cohesion, with zones feeling disconnected rather than part of a cohesive universe. The “mysterious” atmosphere is conveyed through sparse environmental storytelling (e.g., cryptic runes), though this is often overshadowed by repetitive enemy placements.

Visual Design: Pixel art is Abyss’s undeniable triumph. Characters like Leonnor animate with fluidity, backdrops burst with color, and magical effects shimmer with charm. The Excalibur’s glow and celestial beings’ ethereal designs showcase artistic merit. Yet, technical limitations in the Clickteam build blemish this beauty—flickering textures and muddy backgrounds undermine the aesthetic. The Unity update promised “improved graphics,” but this never materialized.

Sound Design: A dynamic soundtrack adapts to environments, with melancholic piano for icy levels and triumphant strings for boss fights. Voice acting is absent, relying on text and sound effects (e.g., clashing swords). However, reports of audio glitches—muffled tracks or sudden silences—pervade player feedback, while the trailer’s “no sound” issue predated launch. Sound, like the game itself, feels half-realized.

Reception & Legacy

Launch & Critical Response: Upon full release (January 2021), Abyss garnered a mixed reception. On Steam, it holds a “Mixed” 65/100 Player Score (Steambase) based on 17 reviews, with positives praising its art and ambition, but negatives citing crashes and poor optimization. MobyGames records a paltry 2.0/5 average from one rating, reflecting near-total neglect. Critic reviews (per Metacritic) are notably absent, indicating industry indifference.

Community Sentiment: Steam discussions and forums highlight frustration. Threads titled “Crash on Launch” and “Game Won’t Start” reveal technical decay, while suggestions like “make it 3D” (developer proposal) underscore disillusionment. The game’s price drop to $3.99 failed to stem the tide, as players felt cheated by an “unfinished product.”

Legacy & Influence: Abyss occupies a niche in gaming history as a cautionary Early Access case. Its stalled development—last updated in September 2021—epitomizes the risks of community-driven design without a firm vision. While it influenced no discernible titles, its association with the “Abyss” franchise (spanning 1980s Spectrum games to modern ports) renders it a footnote in a long-dormant IP. For historians, it documents the indie dream’s fragility; for players, it’s a relic of unrealized potential.

Conclusion

Abyss The Forgotten Past stands as a monument to squandered potential. Its foundation—a story-driven pixel-art platformer with RPG depth and celestial wonder—was sound, but execution faltered at every turn. The developers’ pivot from Clickteam to Unity signaled adaptability but ultimately exposed a project out of its depth, leaving a trail of bugs, broken promises, and abandoned features. While Leonnor’s journey into the unknown remains a compelling concept, the game itself never reaches its destination.

Verdict: As an artifact, Abyss is a valuable case study in development hubris; as entertainment, it is an exercise in frustration. Its place in history is secured not for its innovations, but for its failures—a reminder that ambition without polish is a hollow abyss. For completists and historians, it warrants a cautious look; for discerning players, it remains a forgotten past best left undisturbed.