Craft in Abyss

Craft in Abyss is a sci-fi rogue-lite base building simulation game set in a submerged underwater megastructure. Players take on the role of Alex, a genius engineer who pilots a custom mechanical fortress through the ruins, gathering resources, constructing facilities, and battling mechanical enemies. The core gameplay involves designing the layout of the moving fortress, utilizing auto-defence facilities and a rotating baseplate in combat, and adapting strategies based on randomly acquired digital totems that provide unique skills after each battle.

Craft in Abyss: A Forgotten Gem in the Roguelite Construction Niche

In the vast, churning ocean of Steam’s indie game marketplace, countless titles are launched, briefly buoyed by the hopes of their creators, only to sink into the silent, data-heavy depths of obscurity. Craft in Abyss, a 2020 release from the enigmatic one-person studio FirePillar2, is one such title—a game that dared to fuse the methodical planning of base-building with the frantic, unpredictable chaos of the roguelite. It is a game of fascinating contradictions: ambitious in its hybrid design yet modest in its execution, rich with inventive mechanics yet critically overlooked, a project that speaks to a very specific, almost niche, player desire. This is a deep dive into a game that, much like its protagonist, ventured into the abyss and, despite its qualities, never quite found the surface.

Development History & Context

The Solo Vision of FirePillar2

Craft in Abyss is a testament to the modern indie development ethos: a vision pursued tenaciously by a single developer. Operating under the name FirePillar2, this creator spent six months bringing the game to life before launching it into Steam’s Early Access program on September 3, 2020. The development landscape of 2020 was dominated by a saturated market of indie darlings and the rising tide of the roguelite genre, popularized by behemoths like Hades and Dead Cells. Into this fray stepped FirePillar2 with a uniquely hybrid proposition.

The developer’s vision was clear, as stated in a Reddit post: to create a “rogue-lite game that combines base-building and elements of tower defence games.” Furthermore, the game was imbued with a thematic weight, intended to mirror “the downfall of modern cities like Hong Kong.” This suggests a creation born not just from a desire to experiment with game mechanics, but from a place of personal and political commentary, using the sci-fi dystopia as a lens for real-world urban decay. The technological constraints were those typical of a solo project; the game features a functional but unflashy 3D visual style, top-down perspective, and menu-driven interfaces, prioritizing systemic depth over graphical fidelity. It was a game built for a specific audience—players who value intricate gameplay loops over cinematic presentation.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

A Lonely Ascent from a Drowned World

The game’s narrative, while a backdrop to its gameplay, provides a compelling motive force. Players assume the role of Alex, “a genius engineer” born and raised within the ‘Underwater Ruins,’ a sealed, submerged megastructure. Her home is facing an existential threat, and her quest is a vertical one: she must pilot her custom-built mechanical fortress upward through the ruins, battling the labyrinth’s automated defenses, in search of an exit and a solution.

This premise is rich with thematic potential. The “abyss” is both a literal and metaphorical prison. Alex’s journey is one of claustrophobic ascent, a struggle against the very structure that created her. The setting—a decaying, mechanical, underwater world—evokes a potent sense of isolation and monumental scale, reminiscent of classics like BioShock but from a purely systemic, gameplay-first perspective. The developer’s mention of Hong Kong’s urban landscape as inspiration adds a layer of poignancy; the game’s labyrinth can be read as a critique of oppressive, inescapable urban environments and the human ingenuity required to navigate and overcome them. The story is told not through cutscenes but through the act of building, fighting, and surviving, making the player’s mechanical progress a direct extension of Alex’s narrative progress.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

The Three Pillars of Fortress Management

Craft in Abyss is built upon three interconnected core gameplay loops that create a compelling, if sometimes uneven, cycle of strategy and action.

1. Facilities & Baseplate Construction: This is the game’s strategic heart. Before embarking on a run, players must design their “moving fortress” by constructing and connecting baseplates. This is a brilliant risk-reward system: each additional baseplate allows for more offensive and defensive facilities (turrets, generators, etc.), but it also increases the fortress’s overall size and hitbox, making it a larger target and harder to maneuver through enemy fire. This transforms base-building from a purely expansionist activity into a tense exercise in tactical optimization and efficiency. You are not just building a base; you are engineering a warship’s footprint.

2. Real-Time Battles: Once designed, the fortress is deployed into top-down, shoot-’em-up-style combat. Players directly control the movement of their entire creation, dodging projectile patterns while its auto-firing facilities engage enemies. A key tactical option is the “main cannon,” a powerful player-activated weapon with a significant cooldown. Success yields resources for permanent upgrades, while failure means the loss of that run—a standard but effective roguelite stakes setup.

3. The Digital Totem System (H.O.P.E.): This is the game’s primary roguelite element. After battles, players randomly acquire “digital totems” called H.O.P.E.s (Historical Object of Power and Enlightenment), each granting a unique skill that dramatically alters playstyle. With 56 unique H.O.P.E.s (14 of which completely redefine strategies), the system ensures no two runs are identical. A totem might grant “+25% damage from main cannon. Main cannon now causes recoil,” forcing the player to rethink their fortress’s layout and movement to incorporate the new recoil-based dodging mechanic. This system forces adaptation and clever improvisation, the hallmark of a great roguelite.

The game offered a “Story Mode” with Normal and Hard difficulties across its six chapters and a “Sandbox Mode” for pure experimentation. However, community discussions hinted at technical issues, such as bugs, lag with certain upgrades, and EXE files flagged by antivirus software, which likely impacted the smoothness of the experience.

World-Building, Art & Sound

A Functional, if Not Polished, Dystopia

Craft in Abyss presents a world through a utilitarian lens. The visual direction is top-down and isometric, focusing on clarity of gameplay space over aesthetic detail. The art style is 3D but modest, evoking a sense of a mechanical, industrial underworld. Descriptors like “sci-fi,” “futuristic,” and “cyberpunk” point toward a gritty, technologically decayed atmosphere, though the hand-drawn elements noted in user tags suggest a stylistic blend.

The sound design, while not extensively documented, is noted to be DirectX compatible, implying functional weapon effects and ambient noise to sell the feeling of a clanking, groaning mechanical abyss. The world-building is achieved not through lavish pre-rendered environments but through the gameplay itself—the act of building a fortress from scrap and fighting automated guardians is the story of the world. It’s a testament to emergent narrative, where the player’s struggle defines the tone far more than any written text.

Reception & Legacy

The Quiet Niche of a Cult Classic

Upon release, Craft in Abyss garnered a “Very Positive” rating on Steam, based on 38 reviews (86% positive). This indicates that the players who discovered it were overwhelmingly pleased with its unique blend of genres. A Steambase.io player score of 83/100 reinforces this notion of a small but satisfied player base. However, this success did not translate into widespread recognition. It received no professional critic reviews on Metacritic or MobyGames and remained a niche title, collected by only a single user on the latter platform.

Its legacy, therefore, is not one of broad influence but of a specific, curated appeal. It stands as a fascinating case study for a very particular type of game design: the roguelite base-builder. It shares conceptual DNA with games like Dwarf Fortress in its deep systems, but marries it to the session-based structure of a roguelite. It proved that the intense, long-term planning of construction sims could be effectively chopped up and randomized into compelling, shorter runs. While it may not have directly spawned imitators, it remains a hidden beacon for a certain type of player—one who finds joy in optimizing geometric layouts and adapting those plans on the fly under fire.

Conclusion

Craft in Abyss is a game that deserves a footnote in the annals of indie game history. It is not a flawless masterpiece; its technical roughness and lack of polish are evident. However, its genius lies in its bold synthesis of seemingly incompatible genres into a coherent, challenging, and deeply rewarding whole. The core loop of designing a fortress, testing it in combat, and being forced to adapt its very geometry and purpose based on random upgrades is a concept executed with remarkable intelligence.

FirePillar2 created something truly special: a thinker’s action game, a strategist’s roguelite. It is a game that was lost in the abyss of Steam’s endless new releases, but for those who take the time to seek it out, it offers a uniquely satisfying and inventive experience. It is a forgotten gem, a testament to the innovation that thrives in the indie scene’s shadows, and a compelling argument for the endless possibilities of video game design.