Phantom Abyss

Phantom Abyss is a first-person action roguelike platformer where players navigate procedurally generated ancient temples using parkour-inspired mechanics. Players must avoid deadly traps and obstacles while encountering phantoms—ghostly echoes of previous players’ failed runs—that can be harnessed or avoided. The game combines a low skill floor for accessibility with a high skill ceiling for mastery, offering replayable levels and asynchronous multiplayer elements through these phantoms.

Phantom Abyss: Review

Introduction

In the crowded landscape of modern roguelites and platformers, few games dare to innovate as boldly as Phantom Abyss. This debut title from Brisbane-based studio Team WIBY, published by the ever-eclectic Devolver Digital, thrusts players into a hauntingly beautiful abyss where Indiana Jones-inspired adventure meets asynchronous multiplayer chaos. After a grueling three-year journey through Early Access (launching in June 2021) and a full release on January 25, 2024, the game emerges as a fascinating, flawed, and uniquely ambitious experience. Phantom Abyss succeeds in delivering a novel cooperative loop through its phantom mechanic and fluid traversal, yet stumbles under the weight of technical hiccups and repetitive design. This review dissects its legacy as both a testament to indie ingenuity and a cautionary tale of development evolution.

Development History & Context

Team WIBY, founded by developers including Ben Marrinan (designer) and Joshua Sanderson (programmer), emerged from the ashes of Mr. Shifty, with the studio name itself an acronym for “Will It Be You?”—a former working title for the game. Based in Australia’s tech hub of Brisbane, the team leveraged Unreal Engine to craft a vision born from Marrinan’s desire to explore battle royale-style competition without the live-player constraints. Asynchronous multiplayer and procedural generation weren’t just features; they were pragmatic solutions for a small team aiming to create a world that felt both infinitely replayable and socially connected. Released into Steam Early Access in June 2021, Phantom Abyss capitalized on a gaming landscape hungry for roguelite innovation and asymmetric multiplayer experiments, coinciding with the peak of Among Us-style social phenomena and the enduring appeal of Spelunky-like platformers. Its prolonged Early Access, however, invited scrutiny as players awaited refinements that only arrived incrementally.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

Phantom Abyss wears its narrative lightly, framing gameplay within a minimalist, almost existential fable. Players awaken in an ethereal abyss, guided by a colossal, stoic totem—the “God of the Abyss”—who tasks them with retrieving sacred relics to shatter cosmic chains and secure freedom. The plot unfolds through fragmented environmental storytelling and cryptic totemic pronouncements, never over-explaining the lore but hinting at deeper mysteries through altars, relic lore, and the cyclical nature of the abyss itself. The protagonist remains a silent, customizable avatar, emphasizing player agency over character development. Thematically, the game excavates rich veins of risk and legacy. The “one-and-done” temple system—where each successful run erases the temple forever—explores permanence and ephemeracy, turning every victory into a monument to skill. Phantoms, meanwhile, embody a haunting legacy of failure and communal learning, transforming individual deaths into collective lessons. The absence of overt dialogue or traditional storytelling forces players to confront the abyss as a character—a realm where progress is measured not in narrative arcs, but in the quiet triumph of outwitting a trap that claimed 20 predecessors.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

At its core, Phantom Abyss is a masterclass in distilled mechanics: sprint, slide, jump, and whip. The whip, its signature tool, functions as both a grappling hook and a trap-disabler, enabling fluid parkour across chasms and spike pits. This simplicity, however, masks a punishingly high skill ceiling. Movement is fast and tactile, rewarding precision rolls to negate fall damage and split-second timing to dodge guardians like the laser-eyed “Eye of Agony” or the relentlessly pursuing “Devouring Rage.” The roguelite elements manifest through three modes: Adventure (customizable runs with whip blessings/curses), Abyss (traditional runs with escalating curses like phantom-essence theft or trap-intensity spikes), and Daily Challenge (global leaderboards). Progression is tied to unlocking whips (each with unique boons and drawbacks) and permanent upgrades (e.g., extra hearts, longer whip) purchased with keys from chests. Critically, the asynchronous multiplayer is the game’s beating heart: up to 20 phantoms from failed runs replay alongside you, their actions resetting traps or opening doors—a double-edged sword that can either illuminate safe paths or trigger doom. This creates a “cooperative race” dynamic where success depends on leveraging others’ mistakes, yet the one-attempt-per-temple rule ensures no run is wasted. Despite brilliance, systems feel unbalanced: blessings are too expensive mid-run, and Abyss mode’s escalating curses often feel punitive rather than strategic.

World-Building, Art & Sound

Temples are procedurally generated marvels, spanning four distinct biomes—from vine-choked ruins to lava-forged sanctuaries—with each biome introducing new trap archetypes (e.g., homing mines, pendulum blades). The art direction leans into a vibrant, stylized minimalism, with flat-shaded environments and bold primary colors that contrast sharply with the abyss’s oppressive atmosphere. Traps gain “epic” variants (armored mines, jagged spikes) as players descend, adding visual flair without functional innovation. The final biome, introduced post-Early Access, delivers the most striking vistas but suffers from rare rendering glitches (e.g., inverted colors). Phantoms are rendered as ethereal blue apparitions with trailing dust motes—a haunting visual metaphor for transient failure. Sound design is a mixed bag: Cedar Jones’ score swells effectively during guardian encounters but fades into ambient silence during exploration, heightening tension but sometimes leaving critical audio cues absent. The whip’s crack, spike’s shriek, and guardians’ guttural roars are visceral, yet audio mixing often prioritizes guardians, drowning out subtler environmental details. This sensory dissonance occasionally obscures vital warnings, undermining the game’s tension.

Reception & Legacy

Upon full release, Phantom Abyss garnered a “Mixed or Average” critical reception (Metacritic: 72/100), with praise heaped on its innovative multiplayer (Hooked Gamers: 90%) and fluid movement (Polygon), balanced against critiques of repetition (Hardcore Gamer: 70%) and technical woes (TechRadar: 40%). Player reviews on Steam were more favorable (“Very Positive,” 82%), lauding its addictive “one more run” loop, while lamentating its Early Access-era bugs and progression resets. The game’s legacy is twofold: as a technical innovator (winning “Excellence in Technical Design” at the 2023 Australian Game Developer Awards) and a cautionary tale of scope creep. Its asynchronous multiplayer concept remains influential, offering a blueprint for communal failure without real-time coordination. Yet, its three-year Early Access cycle, while allowing polish, left some critics feeling underwhelmed by the gap between ambition and execution. Despite this, Phantom Abyss carved a niche as a cult favorite for masochistic speedrunners and collaborative puzzle-solvers, its communal phantoms ensuring that no temple feels entirely lonely.

Conclusion

Phantom Abyss is a treasure chest of brilliance marred by imperfect craftsmanship. Its asynchronous multiplayer, whip-based traversal, and procedurally generated temples create an experience unlike any other—a game where failure is not an endpoint but a shared narrative. The sense of descending into a temple haunted by 20 strangers’ ghosts, learning from their ghosts to claim a relic they could not, is profoundly satisfying. Yet, the journey is undermined by technical inconsistencies, repetitive room design, and systems that often feel punitive rather than rewarding. For players seeking a high-stakes platformer with a unique social twist, it’s an essential, if flawed, masterpiece. For the wider industry, it stands as a bold experiment that prioritizes innovation over polish, proving that even in an abyss of traps and phantoms, the most memorable expeditions are the ones that dare to fail differently. Phantom Abyss may not be perfect, but its legacy as a game that made dying for strangers feel meaningful ensures its place in the pantheon of inventive roguelites.