Developed by a small, indie developer Seven Arm Octopus, Infinite Abyss is a brand new space survival game where you are stranded on a harsh planetoid and you must survive with what limited resources you find on the planet. You start off alone but after collecting enough resources you build your own base and then start producing loyal robots who take over most of your tasks on the hostile planet. There are also invading aliens involved in the game. This is our review of Infinite Abyss in which we strap in our suit and collect some resources in space while fighting massive alien UFOs at the same time.
Infinite Abyss is a 2D survival game where you can move just left and right on the planet’s surface. This makes it a very simple yet pretty game to look at. The visuals are retro but they look really good. Your small astronaut character moves either left or right on the planet as he explores the planet for resources in order to set up camp and survive the continuous onslaught of deadly aliens from outer space. This combines with all of the necessary components of any good space survival game with brilliant retro visuals and 2D gameplay mechanics.
Your main goal in Infinite Abyss is to expand your facilities and take over the planet. You can’t really completely eliminate the alien hostiles from the planet because the UFOs keep arriving dropping down more and more aliens for you to fight. However, as you expand your base, you can research and deploy different turrets that can fight these enemies for you. I don’t know how these enemies behave when they are out of the screen because while roaming across the planet, I encountered the enemies even with different defensive turrets in place. While I am looking at these enemies, the turrets shoot at them but for some reason, they managed to stay alive until the time I came to that particular location.
There are three main resources in Infinite Abyss. You have power, gears, and XP. Power is used for building new structures, gears are required to build robots and machines while XP is used in the Laboratory for unlocking structures, vehicles, and other useful items. Apart from there use, their method of collection is different as well. You collect both Power and Gear by bringing resource boxes to your main hub after finding them in the real world. XP is earned through combat and defeating enemies. All three of these resources are equally important in the game so you will need to ensure that you are collecting all of the resources.
Resource collection featured in Infinite Abyss is completely different from normal survival games that I’ve played in a long time. Unlike normal games where you collect resources and store them in your inventory, you cannot do that here. Instead, you must find and push crates of Power and Gear to your main hub where the resource is then actually collected. This makes is really hectic and also vulnerable to enemy attacks. Sometimes your own bullets will destroy a crate because of ricochet of your fired weapons. To make this easier, you will create and deploy different robots that move around the planet’s surface and automatically collect resources for you. Apart from resources lying on the ground, you will often come across random capsules which arrive from space and drop resources for you.
All the buildings and turrets are created in the marked slots. You cannot build on the planet at your own will. The planet is limited so you do not have to worry about an indefinite loop of the planet. If you run out of slots to build more structures, you can purchase more slots at the Laboratory as well. For me, this Laboratory was the most important structure in the game because it allows you to unlock more construction slots, more structures, and even better weapons. The game takes a lot of time because of the resource collection method but Laboratory is something that the game requires right at the start of the game because after you build it, it is all uphill from that. Longer you delay it, longer the game drags down the road.
However, there is no efficient way of managing your units and base. The robots you produce from the Robot Center in the game are essential for your survival because they roam around the planet collecting resources and making your life easier however these robots kept disappearing for me without any reason. I did not have any slightest of the clue whether the enemy was destroying them or they were glitching out of the game. All created robots start moving on their own and if you are lucky, they will continue working for some time before they are lost. There is no indication in the game as well when you lose a robot. The game requires a more efficient way of how it informs you of different functions such as the condition of base defenses, active robots, or any robots under attack by the enemies. Your handy jetpack can quickly take you around the planet which comes with auto-refill of gas.
Coming to the combat, flying around in the jetpack, and shooting enemies is fun but it does not last very long if you do not upgrade to better weapons. The game treats death a little harshly as your hard-earned resources are decreased every time you die. It also keeps increasing as well. For me, it was 5% near the game start and after a certain progression, it went up to 10%. I also was unable to figure out what sort of progression method the game was following because the enemies just kept getting tougher and tougher and I was still stuck with the basic pistol as well as my robots kept disappearing and I had to literally push the resources to the base myself. Combat is pretty unforgiving right from the start of the game.
The enemies started from seemingly harmless green monsters to UFOs dropping full assault mechs equipped with shotguns and machine guns to siege crawlers sending explosive shells that killed me with one hit. Apart from these enemies which harm the player, there is also a big crawler that continues to circle the planet, eating up all of the resources. You are left with no choice but to destroy it unless you want all of the resources gone from your planet. It eats up the barrels of resources and drops behind null boxes which simply explode when you shoot them. At the start of the game, the game seems pretty much balanced in the favor of your enemies rather than your own self. The game does not even pause while you are interacting with buildings and reading about different buildings, items, or vehicles. There is no extra glossary where you can access this information as well so you are left with no choice but to leave yourself vulnerable to the enemies and learn more about certain items or structures.
Infinite Abyss offers quite a lot in a little, tiny package. The combat is brutal and if you are not careful, you will die a lot. The crafting is also brilliant as you have access to a lot of structures, loyal robot minions, defense turrets as well as some really cool vehicles including a fully functional Mech and a 6 wheeled rover. The start of the game might seem a little tough but as you progress in the game, it becomes much easier to explore because of your equipment and robot helpers who basically then take over all of the resource collection for you, leaving you to manage other tasks at hand such as defeating massive alien crawlers and UFOs.
Final Verdict:
Even with all its little quirks here and there, Infinite Abyss has great potential to be a solid time waster. The slow pace of the game sets it ideal for long gameplay sessions as you roam around the planet, expanding your base, fighting off aliens and collecting resources. The inclusion of helping robots and different vehicles makes it a really decent survival title. However, with that said, certain things in the game could be balanced a little bit more specially the combat of the game because we are extremely weak at the start of the weak and you die a lot. In addition, a separate glossary with all the information about the game’s different mechanics and items, structures and enemies could be extremely useful. I enjoyed our time with the game however the small planetoid will eventually run out of space making it potentially game over for you. There is no endgame content here as well so you will be basically done after filling all slots on the planetoid. Infinite Abyss requires patience and if you have patience, it is a great time waster. If you like survival games set in space, Infinite Abyss is right up your alley.
Final Score: 7.0/10
