Until now I couldn’t figure out why Hades, a game with 275,000 positive reviews piled up on Steam, didn’t grab me. Turns out it’s something fairly trivial: I dislike controlling a tiny character in an action game.
Absolum takes the “die, retry” format of Hades—its own subgenre of roguelike at this point—and blends it with the DNA of beat-’em-ups, including those generous 2D sprites we know from the ’90s. French developers Guard Crush are the same people who revived Streets of Rage in 2020, but somehow this project exudes even more love than that one, probably because it’s an original world they created from scratch.
The medieval fantasy realm, Talamh, is a place where magic is outlawed and mages are persecuted by a villain named Azra the Conqueror. The three playable characters are some of the few surviving mages left. Absolum’s Steam Next Fest demo, which includes online co-op, features the full cast: Karl the dwarf, a short-armed bruiser who knocks with knuckles, Galandra, whose heavy sword has more reach, and Cider, whose nimbler fighting style lends itself to aerial combos.
What excites me about Absolum is that it should deliver the replayability that beat-’em-ups classically lack. Like Hades, Absolum is punctuated with A-or-B decisions between ability upgrades called Rituals. One of these elemental crystals granted my basic strikes fire damage over time, another made my attacks generate static electricity that would eventually be discharged in a chain lightning bolt, and another spawned tornadoes that juggled enemies.
The higher-tier upgrades, Inspirations, are awarded after boss fights. Some of these unlock new moves entirely, like a dive kick for Galandra that I enjoyed spamming, or the ability to cling to walls. And laid into this system are the permanent upgrades you can purchase with currency, raising your baseline health, situational damage, or granting other benefits.
My multiple playthroughs have altered the world in small ways that create a sense of progress. The demo showed a couple of secret rooms that have a chance of appearing, and, on a bigger scale, forks in the main path. The first zone splits toward a beach dotted with angry sea snails or a red forest goblin camp. Other parts of the map open up over time, like a gate that can be opened in the demo, behind which you find a group of mercenaries chatting. Crucially, different enemy configurations can spawn in the same area when you pass through it again in another run.
Mashing with a purpose
I love how impactful and percussive Absolum’s combat feels. The two-button setup (light and heavy attack, plus dodge) streamlines fighting, but outstanding presentation makes your simple inputs feel fierce.
Even when I’m just tapping the basic attack over and over, each hit is registered clearly by the sound design, making them individually felt. Frequent freeze frames give you windows of time to take in the damage you’re dealing. Enemies are often punted around the screen by your attacks, rebounding off the edge of the screen like pinballs rather than being thrown out of view.
So this is a less technical beat-’em-up than Streets of Rage 4, something that the developer says is an intentional response to their previous game. “When we were showcasing SOR4 to people at various events, I realized that even though it was a well-known series, I had to explain to people a lot of inputs and concepts like blitz attack (forward, forward + attack), grabs or life-costing special moves,” Jordi Asensio, head of game design at Guard Crush, told me via email.
“I also saw that people were looking for a way to defend themselves, and in SOR4 it is very organic; you move outside of the enemy’s attack range, or you use an attack with invincibility frames. So with Absolum, I wanted to avoid these frictions, starting characters with simpler move sets (giving more complicated moves later on, when the player has a firm grasp of the gameplay). The combat system gets deeper this way, but it starts smaller and it’s easier to get in,” Asensio says.
The collision logic is another satisfying detail. Enemies sometimes line up into these convenient balls of overlapping hitboxes, making each attack feel like a small jackpot of efficient damage. Even in crowded moments like this, I never lost sight of what I was doing or was just button mashing my way out of danger.
I ate the whole Absolum demo up in one sitting with a friend. The difficulty was just right. We were surprised when our third playthrough of an area revealed different enemies. The music is another high point, expensive-sounding medieval mixes with moments that diverge from that style, like heavy metal that kicks up during a boss fight in the mines. This is a team that deeply understands its genre, and looks to be delivering one of the best-yet iterations on it by baking in the replayability of Hades.
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