Absolum

Absolum was provided by Dotemu for review. Thank you!

Absolum brought me back to childhood, when I played Streets of Rage on the Sega Megadrive when I should have been asleep. Sure, this is a fantasy setting, but the vibes were there from the second I started the game. Developed by Guard Crush Games, Absolum blends the classic beat-em-up gameplay from the olden days with the roguelike indie structure that’s so common in the new age, and the result was something more refreshing than I expected.

Despite my childhood, I never really got into the beat-em-up genre. I moved towards strategy games such as Age of Empires, Empire Earth, and the Total War series. Despite this, Absolum caught my interest as soon as it was announced. The fast-paced gameplay and a fascinating world drew my attention, and Absolum came out of the gates swinging. There is a lot to like with this title, and it is also an excellent experience on the Steam Deck.

I did run into some weird freezes before the launch, which is why my review is delayed (apologies!). A pre-launch patch fixed the problem. Phew!

Absolum’s visual and narrative presentation hits you from the moment the game begins, and while the story beats don’t do anything unique, the characters and setting more than make up for that. The world of Talmah was shattered by wizards, triggering a magical collapse that enabled the tyrant king Azra to seize power and enslave magical people through his powerful Crimson Order. Pushed to the edge of extinction, the priestess Uchawi recruits a small force of rebels to fight against the regime, hoping to bring magic back to the world. The voice acting is excellent, and I appreciate all the characters' authenticity. Azra might feel like a typical fantasy dark lord, but I liked his portrayal.

Onto the visuals themselves, the battlefields and locations look fantastic. During your journey across Tamlah in the fight against Azra, the graphics show a vibrant range of biomes. Dense forests break out into fights over babbling brooks, and I intervene in battles between goblins and the Crimson Order in ruined settlements. Possessed and broken dwarves haunt the remnants of their undergrown kingdoms, and so on. I even enjoyed the background detail, which shows how much attention has been put into worldbuilding.

Absolum is one of those rare games where you can play solo or co-op without suffering any downsides. This is incredibly hard to do, especially in narrative games, because of how people tend to play multiplayer. It’s just a fact of life.

Moving on to gameplay, this is where Absolum truly shines. I wish more games had mixed beat-em-up with fantasy elements, and Guard Crush Games has done an incredible job with it. The starting two characters have various abilities and weapons that unlock over time with subsequent runs, and combat feels great. I got tons of pleasure from beating the tar out of goblins and the Crimson Order cronies with my burly dwarf. You get to unlock more warriors by encountering them as you progress, and they all bring their own twists.

Battlefields are relatively small and linear, but they often have things that stand out. There are a bunch of destructible objects that can be broken down. Some can be weapons against foolish tyrants, while others drop extra resources. Different locations can have other characters to interact with, while others have optional areas that are only accessible with specific keys that you might pick up in various runs.

Everything looks great, and the fast-paced combat flows well, too. Few things satisfied me more than when I threw a goblin into a band of Crimson Order thugs, and the progression abilities unlocked during stages added to the appeal. The challenge is high, especially when you’re overwhelmed by enemies and during boss battles. Still, the accessibility features are stellar, offering custom difficulty sliders to change how much damage you deal and take. This superb little option adds more player choice in how they want to play.

Stylish is the word I thought of most when playing Absolum. Everything feels well-crafted with love and attention, and that shows in the visuals and animations, as well as the gameplay loop. If you enjoy roguelike games and beating the tar out of your enemies, Absolum will be a great fit.

Absolum - Steam Deck Performance

Absolum has the Steam Deck Playable badge from Valve, and ProtonDB gives it a Platinum rating. This is well justified, as the game works really well on handhelds.

The game’s startup loading screen strongly recommends using a controller, indicating that Guard Crush Games designed it with consoles in mind. My testing confirmed that when I was testing the preview build on PC, I encountered those early crashes. While the keyboard is an option, I found the default controller option far superior.

Recommended Settings

This is good news for us on the Steam Deck, and I cannot find much to fault Absolum's performance-wise. All the controls run great out of the box. The performance is also solid, with the game running at a smooth 60 FPS with default Steam Deck settings, native resolution, and graphics set to medium. This came as a little surprise to me, but it was still lovely to see the performance problems I had pre-launch resolved.

Absolum is relatively power-efficient on the Steam Deck as things go, and despite all the animations on-screen and gorgeous visuals, this was impressive. You will see an average power draw of 12-13 watts during general gameplay without tweaks, with spikes to 15 watts during heavy combat scenes. That should get you at least 3.5 hours of battery life on the Steam Deck OLED. The only slight sore spot for Absolum's experience on the Steam Deck is the lack of font scaling. Some of the text can be small, although I did not have any difficulty reading anything myself.

Battery Saver Settings

If you’re like me and fanatical about battery life (it’s like an illness for me, seriously), Absolum scales pretty well with the power efficiency of the Steam Deck. If you’re willing to compromise on frame rate and a little bit of visuals, you can almost double the battery life. I found a 4 Watt TDP limit, Graphics on low, and a 30FPS framerate cap provided the best balance with an average power draw of 7-8 watts. Absolum still looks great even with low graphics settings, especially on the OLED.

Accessibility

Absolum is available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish (Spain), Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Ukrainian.

Absolum comes with a nice array of accessibility features, including Vsync, colorblind modes, motion blur toggles, and an expanded difficulty modifier that lets the player adjust damage dealt to themselves or enemies in either direction. Overall, there’s a lot to like here.

Conclusion

Absolum is, overall, a fantastic package. I was surprised it took so long for someone to craft a beat-em-up roguelike, and Absolum has excellent production quality across the board. The combat is diverse and well-made with punchy visuals, and the worldbuilding is better than it has any right to be. Hades, of course, has set the bar for what rogue-like games can do with narrative, and Absolum does a great job of combining all the different gameplay elements.

The challenge is up there, and I’d say the difficulty is on the high end, but the damage modifiers give all that control to the player. A near-perfect experience on the Steam Deck is just a juicy bonus. My only real gripe with Absolum is the poor experience without a controller, which is minor compared to everything positive about the game. I strongly recommend it!

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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