While the brawler genre is most commonly remembered for scenes of vigilante street fighters beating up gang members or superheroes unleashing their powers, another long-established legacy includes a decidedly more fantastical backdrop, where wizards and warriors battle their way across a scrolling screen, mount fire-breathing dragons, and fling out spells. If that flavor has always appealed to you, I’ve got good news: Your long quest is finally over – Absolum is the platonic form of this simple but endearing structure. You have many hours of glorious hacking and slashing ahead.
Absolum casts players as spellcasting adventurers in a fantasy world overrun by a tyrant, fighting to restore balance and dispel an overarching and incomprehensible evil. Within the familiar story framework, the developers manage to present nuanced and compelling world-building, with a sense of captivating history. Alongside a gorgeous hand-drawn cartoon-style aesthetic, I was consistently eager to see more of the fiction unfold. The game also deserves a special call-out for one of the most hummable adventure musical scores of the year – I would sometimes choose my level pathing purely to listen to a favorite tune again.
Taking cues from some of the most successful roguelites of recent years, Absolum builds death and rebirth into the narrative’s conceit; the heroes ceaselessly throw themselves into danger and premature defeat, only to level up and try again. I like the way new quests, characters, and conflicts gradually layer themselves in, easing the sense of repetition through consistently new twists.
Each run is also kept fresh by the unique power combos you can craft and the paths you trace across the map. For the former, your selection between a cast of four characters each exhibits unique strengths, which are further enhanced as you pick up different rituals over the course of a run. Maybe this time is the elven warrior beefed up with chain lightning, and the next is the clockwork assassin powered by tidal waves and necromancy. The options for light buildcrafting are intriguing, even as additional global upgrades are purchased between runs to elevate your abilities further. I do wish there were more precise explanations and numerical values attached to each character’s playstyle, but time playing each helps to answer those questions.
Players can split off onto numerous different paths over the course of a full run, each with varying backdrops of level, enemy encounters, and bosses. Even those layouts begin to change things up, with additional quests and dynamic events that keep you guessing. The effect is that even after battling through 30-plus completed runs, I was never bored or trapped in repetition. Absolum rewards experimentation with different characters, builds, and pathing through an attempt, and I was finding fresh experiences even after dozens of hours.
The brawling mechanics themselves are straightforward to pick up, but incredibly satisfying to master. The frenetic battles demand aggressive attacks, juggling enemies, and building long combos. With time, the mastery of dodges, deflects, and finishing moves lets you take on some intense and titanic battles, from undead dwarven kings to cosmic horrors from another dimension.
Absolum is great fun all by yourself, but it also allows you to bring a friend along for some companionable co-op, either locally or online. Both options perform admirably, and the game is all the more fun with another fantasy hero at your side. While a further expansion to three or four players might have led to overwhelming on-screen action, it does feel like a missed opportunity not to allow for larger parties. But even as a partner deal, it’s one of my favorite cooperative experiences of recent years. Online multiplayer is handled with a clever twist, where story progression is limited to whichever player is further behind (to avoid spoilers), even as both players maintain their overall power levels and global ability unlocks as they play.
I also applaud the freeform approach to an assist mode, which allows players to customize both damage output and damage received to set the difficulty precisely as desired. The default challenge is significant but not insurmountable; however, more story-focused players should appreciate having an easier route to game completion. Unfortunately, this assist mode is disabled in online multiplayer.
Absolum is a game I’ve wanted to play since I was a kid. We get simple, approachable brawling battles, high production values in art and music, and a richly imagined fantasy world, all wrapped around a narrative that makes replay and progression worth coming back to advance again and again. It’s not a game that is going to change anyone’s opinions about the genre, but it is a brilliant implementation of a very old formula into something that feels modern, deeply replayable, and unmistakably fun.
