Surviving the Abyss Reviews

Abyss : 0 - Sp1der : 1

If you can get past the bugs that can potentially ruin a playthrough, it's a solid game, with a pseudo-horror vibe. Shame that it seems like the devs have abandoned this, when some things need to either be fixed or could be explained better (like resource symbols that are never explained unless you happen to accidentally hover your cursor over them at the top of the screen.

I finally got around to finishing the main story, after playing the game sporadically during early access. First of all, the aestethics are spot on, at least if you're a fan of abyssal horror, like me. The threat of the unknown is present at all times, and serves as a full counter to the more mundane city-builder gameplay. The devs have sorted out many of the annoyances I ran into during early access (primarily balancing issues), and the game now plays well. There are still a couple of control issues, namely the tunnels sometimes being a right pain in the bum to place, but all in all, no major issues in terms of control.

I bought this game on release and was pretty disappointed, but it was early access and figured it needed more time to cook. However, coming back to it post V1 release, I really enjoyed it. Interesting twist on a city builder, it kept me hooked until the end. I hope more content comes out for it in the future

Difficult at the start, but once you start to get the hang of the cloning the generalists it gets pretty easy to maintain your resources. The only part I'm lacking is getting higher quality clones with fauna traps. Might have been a bad case of rng for me though. Addendum: Needs some kind of tweaks for when clones are made, I keep having frame rate drops whenever I get multiple labs finishing off clones. Overall still good. Can't wait for more content updates.

Kinda short (beat in 10h) but it was pretty fun. Cool setting and spooky at times. Plays similar to Planetbase just underwater. Also, clone slaves lol

Highly recommend giving this game a solid play through. On any difficulty level there are challenges and obstacles to overcome that always bring me more joy when overcome. Currently hold all achievements currently available for this game (07/27/2025) and I am still adding hours to the game. Looking forward to what else is in store for this great game!

Paradox Arc is a publisher that has 'Small studios that create games which capture the Paradox DNA.' Comparing the game to Mars or Aftermath, it cannot compare to those expectations. On the one side, the gameplay is minimal, and very little replay value. On the other one, there is no content locked behind DLC, or superfluous and parasitic content in the aformentioned. The story is very average, if it has one at all, but worth the money at half off, full price if you feel generous. Overall, it's just very upsetting that it shares a name with the 'Survive' series, once again, setting up false expectations, especially since it is a small studio, instead of the main one.

Feels unpolished, even still. The game could use a serious overhaul in the UI (the save screen feels like it's from a 2010 game), it's hard to differentiate between resources, and the tutorial is basically useless. I have previously put 100+ hours in Surviving Mars, the sister game, and even I found certain gameplay aspects of Surviving the Abyss unintuitive. The concept is really neat, and visually the game does deliver, for the most part (although it cuts certain corners that it shouldn't - why make a point of having the player painstakingly build tunnels/tubes between buildings, make them glass, but not allow us to see the NPCs walking through them?). If you're a fan of the base building survival genre, give this a spin - after you've played much better games such as Surviving Mars, Frostpunk, Rimworld. If you're not a fan, skip this. EDIT: Attempted to complete the game but ran into a bug where I unlocked content out of order, leaving me unable to unlock previous content (in my case I unlocked samples Y and Z before X). Very frustrating ending, a game breaking bug such as this means the game should have never made it to official 1.0 release.

The game is fun, but the cloning aspect completely ruined it for me. You’re deep underwater building a cloning facility. Sounds cool, until you realize you're creating human clones that only live for five days, just to put them to work in the mines or have them generate energy (seriously?). Meanwhile, you can bring in workers from the surface... so why not just do that? So here's the loop: you build a clone, it works for five days, then dies. When it dies, the game hits you with a "moral choice": examine the corpse to improve your cloning tech, or respect the dead to boost crew morale. Excuse me? How is the crew suddenly having an ethical crisis after litraly creating a slave? What’s the point of a cloning facility that creates clones just to keep itself running? It’s a closed loop that makes no sense. How it should work: You hire workers from the surface. You use the facility to produce clones—then sell them for military use, scientific research, or whatever. You earn resources and expand your cloning operation from there. Simple.