End of Abyss really impressed me with its dedication to rewarding exploration and oppressive atmosphere when it was released earlier this month. The team behind it is composed of developers who worked on the Little Nightmares franchise, and while you can see the aesthetic throughline between the two works, the actual experience of playing the game is something else entirely.
Section 9 co-founder Marcus Ottvall took some time to answer a few questions about the making of this unique game.
Little Nightmares was a moody puzzle platformer that guided you through strange areas with horrific creatures, but End of Abyss felt closer to something like an isometric Metroidvania, forcing you to explore the various locations to continue to progress. Even though the games are very different gameplay-wise, the previous experience was valuable to getting End of Abyss off the ground, especially given Section 9’s smaller team size.
“We hope that we have learned a lot from the previous projects we’ve worked on. We are using a similar workflow but tried to tweak it for our preference to make things as effective and forward-moving as we could for our smaller team. The approach for this game came out of a desire to create something that had a lot of different gameplay functions while traversing an atmospheric world.”
When starting the project, the team looked to some of their favorite media of the past for inspiration on not only what tone they wanted to set, but what kind of gameplay they wanted to explore.
“We grew up with different types of media from the ’80s and ’90s and gravitated towards horror movies like The Thing, Alien, anime like Akira and Ghost in the Shell, and video games like The Legend of Zelda and Metroid. Those older video games and movies put a higher demand on manual craftsmanship, which we think gives them a certain style that we like. There are other inspirations as well, but those, along with some others, are the ones that were top of mind and kept us largely on track.”
Not only does the game focus heavily on transversal, giving you tools and abilities to slowly make different parts of the map available as the game goes on, but it asks you to confront enemies in a manner akin to a twin-stick shooter, albeit with a slower, more methodical pace. Ottvall says that this came from an earlier version of the project that had a slightly different focus.
“The project actually started off as a more action-focused game, but as we chose to explore a more atmospheric style and combined that with the semi-top-down action that we already had, we found that to be a pretty unique combination. From there, we tried to find the balance between the action, adventure, and horror.”
One of the things that impressed me most about the game was how little it felt like it held your hand as you made your way around the world. But like any good game, if you look close enough, you could see the deft hand of the designer subtly guiding you. After starting off with a relatively linear section, it opens up much more, allowing the player to figure their own way through the game.
“From pretty early on, we wanted the project to start off linear with hints of exploration, then have largely free exploration in the middle of the game, to then go back to have a more linear end game. Towards the end, the player would be able to choose to go to the very end or to go back and explore more areas that they had seen hints of, but couldn’t reach before. With this in mind, we tried setting a scenario that would present this option to players while giving them some side scenarios that would make it interesting to backtrack to. Since we hadn’t done this type of game before, we had to explore ways to do this, but once we set that premise, we didn’t deviate from it.”
Exploring is made dangerous by strange mutated enemies that are as deadly as they are horrific-looking. This added a satisfying layer of difficulty as you backtracked through areas, but Section 9 worked hard to get that challenge dialed in to the right level.
“The approach was challenging but not overly difficult. We wanted a pretty lightweight game system, not a fully fledged RPG system. The idea for enemies was to mix having them waking up from sleeping states with those who would instantly attack you, to keep you on your toes. For some areas, we also change enemies depending on how far you have progressed to try and make the world state a little more dynamic. Some enemies and bosses are more narratively focused than others. In all cases though, we wanted them to make sense in their environments and have gameplay patterns that would differ a lot or slightly from each other.”
Taking inspiration from the aforementioned influences, End of Abyss’ creature design is not only impressive in a visual sense, but also does a great job of communicating the type of challenge each enemy will pose to the player. Lots of work went into crafting the enemies and bosses, and it clearly paid off.
“In most cases, we started the process by discussing gameplay mechanics for an enemy or boss. From there, we sketched a lot of concepts and created mockup models, animations, and effects to see how they could look when performing their attacks and how they would move. It was the best way to have the gameplay control the visuals, and kind of necessary in order to know how we would develop the systems for the enemies. That said, there are some enemies and bosses that came to life from wanting to explore something that we found visually interesting. Sometimes that would make it hard to find fitting behaviors and attack patterns, but the other way around could make it hard to find the visual aspect.”
To bring the moody and atmospheric world to life, the team crafted an enigmatic tale that strikes a good balance of giving you enough details to be intriguing but never enough to give you the full picture.
“We wanted to set a mysterious tone and build from there. It triggers our curiosity when we see only hints of things. For the narrative, we wanted to make the characters have their own knowledge of things, and they don’t speak much more than they have to. The idea was that the characters should be able to express hints of emotions by their poses or their movements, or that a pause in their dialogue could indicate that they are thinking. For the larger story, the idea was that you should be able to figure out more of how things are connected by exploring and finding clues in the environment, and putting that together with what the characters are saying. The thought was to have the environment tell the foundation of the story and setting.”
There are two endings to the game, with one of them hidden behind an elaborate item collecting quest that requires you to revisit areas with late game abilities to uncover previously inaccessible secrets. While Section 9 considers either ending to be ‘complete,’ they wanted to make sure to reward players for engaging with the game’s many secrets.
“The thought was to tell a little more of the story, and to give the players who take the time to explore a little badge of honor for completing most of the game. We considered having more parts of the story being revealed by the second ending, but landed on having it as a small change that would reveal a small story part that also has a big impact on [the main character] Cel’s outcome.”
End of Abyss is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via the Epic Games Store.