Drawn Down Abyss Reviews

Good game idea but not a fan of it

It was pretty fun for some time, but after that, I kinda got bored of it. Still pretty good game!

just give positive bc he is nice guy, but the enemy is hard to spot, idk why they suddenly spawn, and the bullet also hard to spot, and when we waiting for mana to reload we have nothing to do, and killing enemy doesnt give much satisfaction, no coins or shop too. but again dev is nice

Drawn Down Abyss is a solid little game with an interesting premise but flawed execution. The art is good and the music is fittingly mysterious/wild, if a bit repetitive. The world art does get a bit old, and there aren't that many unique layouts, but it's enough for the length of time you'll probably be playing. The core gameplay loop has a lot of potential. Your first run has you starting a new "deck" that will persist between runs. From this deck, you will be dealt a handful of cards at the beginning of each floor. More cards can be added to you hand from your deck by either picking them up off the ground or playing a "draw" card. The goal of each floor is to simply survive until the trapdoor to the next opens. At the start of a new floor, you can choose to change your deck using one to two cards "dropped" from the previous roundd. There are three general types of cards that enhance your character: movement, combat, or defense. Movement cards will usually add jumps, dashes, or teleports. Combat cards will be either permanent or timed damage-dealing attacks. Defense cards could be healing or shields. Cards are played by from your hand and cost different amount of mana. You can get more mana either via timed regeneration or combat. The issues start to appear with the enemy AI and placement. At the start of a new floor, it seems like a fixed number of enemies spawn. Their variety is fairly good, but they can broadly categorized into two types: ground based, and air based. Air based enemies will usually fly directly at you or hover, while ground based enemies will typically fire projectiles or leap if within range. The problem with this is that once ground enemies reach the bottom of the map, they're basically stuck there until they die. Air-based enemies will follow the player, but are typically pretty easy to dodge. It's fairly simple to abuse this mechanic to just wait out the timer and hop to the next floor. To make things more interesting, you may be tempted to try the combat route instead. The issue with this is that there doesn't seem to be any reason to kill enemies and, in some cases, you're actively punished for doing so. Releasing a 5 mana attack will almost never get you a return of more than 5 mana, causing most offensive tactics to be net losses. Additionally, a fixed number of enemies are present at all times. Enemies spawned at the start of the floor won't despawn unless killed, regardless of if they're on the screen. The moment an enemy dies, another will take its place in your field of view. This leads to chains where you unleash a couple attacks only to be beaten down by a never-ending stream of monster spawning near you. This leads to either running out of cards, mana, or health. Enemies will also sometimes spawn directly on top of you, or in your path, causing (seemingly) unavoidable damage. There seems to be an end goal after about 20-30 floors, with floors taking around 90 seconds. The unavoidable damage from combat requires luck of the draw and decent defensive cards to have any real success. This cuts down on specialization, and makes for very slow hit-and-run gameplay. Drawn Down Abyss is worth a look as a curiosity, and I appreciate the commitment to the concept. At some point I may try to see what's at the bottom of the abyss. Unfortunately, I have a feeling the run that does it will involve a lot of standing around waiting for the door to open while I kite enemies far away from the floor of the map. Edit: Having played a bit more, things do get more chaotic. The same issues still apply with enemies spawning on you. Technical stuff: It ran well enough at 1440p, although only in fullscreen (1080p is the highest resolution I saw windowed). There's no ingame sound option. It doesn't like to be alt-tabbed. The menus can only be navigated using keyboard (untested with a controller). The way the window is displayed stopped both Nvidia and Steam overlays from showing.

100% the weirdest game I've ever played. Drawn Down Abyss is a platformer, a bullet hell, a card game, and an arcade game all at once. The goal is to survive long enough for the door to open and proceed to the next room. How far can you go? You can move around and double jump; everything else is done via playing cards to perform certain moves. At any time you can pull up your hand (pausing the gameplay) and play a card. This game works in some strategical balances that impressed me. Over all, this game is really really weird, but everything works nevertheless.

I see so much great potential in this game! The gameplay is super cool but the movement is janky and the enemys keep hitting you with this annoying precision and knockback. Not saying this game is bad at all! I'm having fun playing and learning more! Will be playing more soon

Fun game. The gameplay loop starts to feel a bit repetitive after a while, might just be my modern brain with no ability to focus.

Yes Very interesting I bought this awhile back, but never really played until now, I regret that I held it off for so long. This sort of roguelike, deck builder, platformer all mashed into one very well polished game

This is such a weird game. You get a deck of cards that have abilties to heal, draw more cards, attacks and even jumps \ you can only seemingly jump in the game, everything else is dictated by cards. you have rooms you need to clear all the enemies in - picking up new cards as you go along - after you kill the enemies in the area, the path opens to the floor below. it's just so bizarre - I mean you're literally jumping in the air, bringing out your hand - and using a card to jump to a higher spot at times. cards are consuming energy upon use, which replenishes over time. really really weird concept - and it strangely works.

Really fun, and visually beautiful game. it's really incredible what can be achieved with just pygame.