The Abyss

Introduction

The Abyss is a short mini-game created by Black Heart of RPG Maker.net using RPG Maker XP. As a project The Abyss carries a lot of the signs of an early project, and while this doesn't make the game unplayable. I'd be remiss if I said this game was any good.

Genre Classification

While I don't want to delve deeply into the topic of classifying games into genres since the lines have become a bit blurred over the years. This game doesn't really match any of my criteria for being considered a RPG. If anything this game is just a short puzzle game with rather disappointing puzzles all things considered.

Glitches

During the trial for the first crystal if you interact with at least one of the switches in particular twice you'll be turned into a switch. Thankfully, this doesn't prevent you from finishing the game, but it has to be one of the oddest glitches I've ever encountered in a game.

Though, I suppose I should be thankful since a lot of the other glitches were fixed by a fellow reviewer before I even played this game.

Story

The story of The Abyss feels malformed in my opinion. While the concept of a member of an alliance of evil leaving the fold and becoming a hero isn't an unheard of concept. Such a story requires a lot of time and effort to be put into it to explain why the character in question switched alignments.

The Abyss on the other hand skips over all of the pivotal character development behind such a change of heart in favor of a short game that involves flipping a single switch, answering a few questions, and ghosting through a few maze walls. I suppose, you could argue that the game is just a snapshot into the life of the main character, and was never intended to be taken seriously. But if that was going to be the case. Then why not go full in with the usual cliche of a spikey haired youth saving the world? At least then I could chalk the hero up as being just another generic hero instead of a potentially interesting character being wasted in a game that doesn't define him.

Outside of my gripes with the story failing to delve into the main character properly. The game is also riddled with several grammatical mistakes, spelling mistakes, and incorrect word usage. One of the more glaring examples of the last issue has to come from the so called Wisdom Eagle which tells you that you'll need to collect five crystals in order to escape the abyss while in actuality you only need four. And the game includes a few scenes where the text is slightly cut off.

Gameplay

On the gameplay side of things there isn't much to talk about. All you do is navigate a few simple mazes where you can ghost through some of the walls and answer a few questions. Though, if you answer any of the questions incorrectly its an instant game over. Which is rather annoying considering a few of them are trick questions with answers that feel rather arbitrary.

Graphics

In terms of mapping the game is rather average. While the layouts aren't particularly interesting they aren't horrible either. The only major misstep in the game is that a few of the maze walls aren't impassable. This makes it possible for the player to simply ghost through the walls in order to complete them and removes any sort of difficulty they could have had. Though, even if you don't discover this trick the mazes aren't particularly challenging.

Music

On the musical side of things the game is just average. The handful of selections that are in this game don't feel mismatched to whats going on nor does listening to it make the player's ears bleed. I suppose if you are a fan of heavier music then you might enjoy the background music in a few segments in this game, but otherwise it's unremarkable.

Conclusion

The Abyss is obviously an early project and is easily marred by a lack of polish. This is one of those projects you should only delve into if you are looking for a quick game to breeze through and have a taste for badly designed games. Heck, even getting to the end credits in this game is an example of bad design. Since, I doubt the average player would think to walk to the top right corner and interact with the water in order to beat the game.