It’s a testament to the quality and inventiveness of Absolum that it stood out as strongly as it did when it released in October last year, a month that also brought us Battlefield 6, Bloodlines 2, and a little game called Arc Raiders. Absolum’s roguelite twist on a classic beat ’em up format was exactly the citrus twist the genre needed, yielding glowing reviews and, as of 17 days ago, half a million players.
Slightly belatedly, developer Guard Crush Games (who were co-devs on Streets of Rage 4 alongside LizardCube) released Absolum’s first major update Threads of Fate, which pistons a fistful of new features straight into the base game’s jaw.
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Elsewhere, the update expands Absolum’s customisation options with new character skins and emotes for all four heroes, and upgrades mounts with new and improved abilities to ensure “harder-hitting punishment against the hordes of the Crimson Order.” And finally, the update brings the usual array of bug-fixes, some of which will no doubt elicit a sigh of relief (“The Chicken is no longer targetable by enemies”) while others sound weirdly ominous (“The Interloper now has a shadow”).
All of this should improve what was already one of last year’s most interesting games, as Evan Lahti explained in his Absolum review. “Absolum is ultimately a beat ’em up with a bit more depth and progression than we’ve seen before in this style of game,” he wrote last October. “Absolum lacks the extensive variance of a true roguelike, but delivers enough intricacy to push the genre into a more interesting space than it’s ever occupied.”
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