DEATH IN ABYSS (Demo)

Death In Abyss has an incredible, amazing design with a speed and utility of freedom of motion akin to ULTRAKILL with gameplay inspired by games like Star Fox Assault and mecha games. 

I adore the retro-style graphics with terrifying eldritch sea creatures with a somewhat mysterious story.

The gameplay... although fun, feels gimmicky after a bit of playing. The concept of being able to save yourself during a grace period to KILL whatever may or may not be your death within 5 seconds is really dang cool, but the game doesn't explain it too clearly. Gaining health from killing enemies is a swell addition.

Genuinely-- this game has amazing personality, mystery, and from the first intro scene it has that feeling of terror that puts a lump in your throat, that later becomes an adrenaline filled fight to survive and obliterate all that comes after you with lasers, missiles, and precise piloting...

The game is well worth giving it a try... but I have criticisms...

I do hope that in the full game there are upgrades to deal with swarms of enemies, such as bigger missile explosions/fragmentation missiles to allow for more enjoyable ease of clearing groups of enemies, as with how the game is now clearing groups of minor enemies felt more like a chore than a terrifying fight to survive. Micromanaging in an annoying way rather than a rewarding and thrilling way. 

The game is filled with amazing potential... but...

I hate. HATE.HATE the first boss... and so far there is only one boss, which is awful. It felt like a boss that should be in a secret area or in a later phase of the game.

Before I continue with the first boss: The mechanic of snipers in this game is interesting but executed very poorly given the dodge mechanics needing to be tighter than a welded bolt-- and when you have to decide between dodging multiple enemies or a single sniper shot, you have to choose the sniper shot-- which causes unavoidable damage, which is not a fair design choice. It feels annoying and unfair. 

Back to the boss: It has four sniper eyes that shoots one after the other. You destroy one and the other three start firing faster.. but they also fire when you are not even within the Line of Sight of the eyeballs. It is a wretched experience with a 3 phase boss where the first phase has the awful design of "super hard = fun" and then the rest of the boss is equivalent to a tutorial fight. It is extremely jarring when you downloaded this very unique game only 10 minutes ago and the game expects you to already know how to dodge all these attacks with borderline perfect precision.

The game, again, is amazing in concept... and of course-- it's not even released. The demo gave me a longing to see a full game and I will happily support it. Once the design philosophy and vision has been completed, refined, and then perfected? I think this is a legendary game in the making akin to ULTRAKILL, Dusk, Shovel Knight, and other indie legends.

fun game!

Incredible soundtrack, amazing sound design, and butter smooth controls result in a fantastic experience.
There really is too much to compliment here, it's some of the most fun I've had on itch, sweetened by the terrific design and visual style.
But DIA is not sinless, the bosses (especially the Nightdrifter) suffer from telegraphing and consistency issues, I felt like there was a drastic difficulty jump from the enemy swarms to the bosses.
This is weighted though! I keep coming back to the bosses because the game is just so addictive, there's always the sense of possible progress.
Overall, an excellent game! I'd recommend it if you have better senses than I!

Made a video

Absolutely amazing demo. This is what a demo should be. Strong concept, fantastic sound design and queues, and satisfying loop. Only have small nitpicks.

Obligatory gameplay video:

This is a really fun game for sure and had a nice arcade feel to it. Keep it up.

Here's my channel for other games I have played. https://www.youtube.com/@Levont

For being a demo, this was quite a fun one! Loved the spaceship controls and how controlling the ship felt, really love the arcadey feeling of it. And the graphics were quite well done as well. Wasn't able to beat the demo mission, got halfway like twice, but probably a fault of me not being good at this haha. Made a video on it.

Oh MY GOD this brings me back man!! this game ooo I cannot wait to see it's full release! but, don't take this as you need to rush this, please take as much time as you need!

What a great game! The music, ambience, artwork, combat, and movement were fantastic AND it was definitely 100% as intense as advertised. Could probably blame my own personal skill issues for that though. I will say the gameplay took some getting used to but when it all finally clicked I thought it was so much fun. Really enjoyed playing it! Can't wait to see more!

I love this. Devil Daggers never quite clicked for me, but this is exactly what I think I was hoping to get out of that game.  Day 1 purchase for me when its out.

I really liked the game, especially the visuals. I'm a big fan of the PSX aesthetic and this game is very reminiscent of some titles from that era. However, I didn't quite understand the mission in the demo build. Do I just fight the creatures endlessly?

Ah yes, dev-starship-troopers-il daggers

Kinda unreal how fun the general movement of the ship feels. I hesitate to call it perfect, but it's definitely almost there. I think all that really needs to be changed is the speed while ascending or descending should be increased somewhat

I managed to get till 33% of the first mission and I love pretty much everything about this so far. Love how the general enemies are basically pac-man and how good the sound indicators are

However, I'm not really a fan of how the enemies more or less look the same when they're all clumped up together and trying to get you. It's kinda impossible to indistinguish between them since they're all pretty much the same colour and texture

And I'm not really sure if you need to have the overheat bar because with the amount you get swarmed, you're definitely going to be dodging a lot. It seems like an unnecessary thing to add to the amount of things the player has to keep track of.

That said, if you want to keep it, I think it should be made slightly more forgiving ( i.e the amount that gets added to the bar should be a little lesser when you dodge or boost too much ) or you should have some way to decrease the bar ( if there is then I guess you can ignore this lol )

Edit : I played more and realised that killing enemies restores health. I guess that last bit I said is a moot point kek

Apart from that though, Definitely playing more. Great job on this so far