Luna Abyss Review: A Memorable FPS Bullet Hell Dance

5 days ago 2

Published May 20, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT

Christian Bognar is a Writer at DualShockers with over three years of experience covering the gaming industry. Since 2022, he has written guides and reviews for publications including DualShockers, CBR, Attack of the Fanboy, PC Invasion, and The Game Slayer. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from Roanoke College.

Christian has been an avid gamer since childhood and views games as one of the strongest forms of art and storytelling. As a reviewer, he makes a point of finishing a game before writing a review, helping him evaluate each title with a complete understanding of its story, systems, and overall experience.

When I first saw the announcement trailer for Luna Abyss, I was instantly intrigued by the aesthetics of the world that developer Bonsai Collective was creating. A first-person shooter set in a dark and brooding world is nothing new, but the blend of sci-fi elements, creepy character models, and cosmic horror environments instantly drew me in.

The initial reveal trailer was released a whopping four years ago, in 2022. Over the course of four years, I have followed Luna Abyss, and my anticipation for the game never dwindled once, despite the very long wait. Now that the game is finally here, I can mostly say that the wait was worth it, even though I am kind of left wondering what took them so long to finally get it out.

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Luna Abyss is an extremely short experience, and the long development doesn’t really make sense to me. However, despite it only taking me 6 and a half hours to beat, I can confidently say that Luna Abyss is a solid first-person shooter that has an old-school feel to it. It can’t stand with the greats, and doesn’t necessarily bring anything new to the genre, but overall, I’m glad I played it.

Welcome to Prison

Luna Abyss follows Fawkes, a woman who has been sentenced to prison for 10,000 years. In order to reduce this incredibly long sentence, it's up to you to explore a derelict megastructure, called the Abyss, beneath the surface of Luna moon. Your main objective is to acquire forgotten technology from the Abyss, but as you soon find out, not everything is as it seems.

As you progress through the story and complete tasks for your handler, named Aylin, your prison sentence length gets reduced. The length of your prison sentence is shown on the left side of the screen after completing a task, so you get to watch it reduce slowly in real time the further you get into the game.

I thought this prison sentence idea and the mechanic of lowering it by completing objectives was a smart way to make progression more meaningful at first, but it turns out it's not all that important. It would have been really cool if your decisions and actions affected this prison sentence to the point that it would affect the ending or outcomes, but that's simply not the case. Instead, it's just a sidebar and doesn't matter at all.

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However, I found the overall story of Luna Abyss to be really engaging, with a strong premise that consists of twists and revelations, more so than the typical first-person shooter of this style. It has surprisingly great voice acting and beautifully designed character models that make speaking to them a joy, even if some of them are depressing.

The NPCs you meet along the way all have unique personalities, their own backstories, and are used as a tool to expand the lore of the Abyss and the world itself. Some of these characters have their own side quests, and while they aren't very in-depth and only really require you to speak to them in various locations, I still find myself wanting to complete them due to their interesting narrative.

I found the overall story of Luna Abyss to be really engaging, with a strong premise that consists of twists and revelations, more so than the typical first-person shooter of this style.

By the time the credits rolled on the story, I was very satisfied. In short, and without going into spoilers, it's a tale of betrayal, regret, and discovering the secrets of a lost colony. I highly recommend that if you love following stories in your video games, take the time to read the data logs you find on your journey, as these provide a ton of answers and give you a better understanding of what's actually happening.

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Luna Abyss follows a combat model that mixes the bullet hell elements of Returnal and Saros with the first-person shooter action of DOOM, albeit not as fast-paced. It places an emphasis on switching between weapons to defeat its enemies, dodging and dashing through projectiles, and healing on the fly.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the combat of Luna Abyss due to its fluidity and the general feel of each of the guns in the game. There are a total of four guns to use: an assault rifle, a shotgun, a rifle, and a rocket launcher. Each of these weapons consists of one core upgrade that players can find to make them stronger, usually found off the beaten path.

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Not only does each gun have its own strength, but they also come with their own unique purpose when it comes to exploration and defeating specific enemies. For example, the shotgun can be used to destroy blue barriers, the sniper destroys purple, while the rocket launcher can be used to target multiple locks or enemies that need to be destroyed at the same time.

This is where changing weapons in quick succession comes into play, as there are always multiple enemies on screen. For example, you have to use the sniper to dispose of an enemy with a purple shield, quickly switch to a shotgun to defeat the one with a blue, and then use your rocket launcher to destroy a wave of explosive enemies floating toward you.

The need to constantly switch between weapons feels great and adds a nice layer of strategy to combat. I’m happy this is the case, rather than allowing the player to just pick one weapon that feels the best and use it for the rest of the game. It helps prevent the combat from growing stale.

Each combat encounter utilizes this formula to the best of its ability, and the importance of switching weapons becomes increasingly more important as you get farther in the game. Each encounter is a little bit tougher than the last, helping Luna Abyss have a solid difficulty progression with no unnecessary spikes.

This is also true with the game's boss fights, which are Luna Abyss's strongest aspect. Each boss brings its own unique challenge, all of them offering a beautiful array of colorful bullets filling the screen. The best comparison to make when it comes to the bosses is that they are similar to Housemarque's games, where it's a dance of reading its moveset and dashing through openings in the enemy's bullets.

The need to constantly switch between weapons feels great and adds a nice layer to combat.

However, none of the bosses ever reach the difficulty of Returnal's, with only the last two of the game giving me trouble. In fact, most of the bosses are surprisingly easy. For reference, I was playing on the standard difficulty, but the good news is that Luna Abyss offers multiple difficulty options, allowing you to make it harder if you're finding the experience too simple.

Jump, Grapple, Dash

Between the combat encounters, players will spend most of their time completing a series of platforming sequences. Similar to combat progression, where each encounter becomes slightly more challenging than the last, platforming progressively becomes more complex the further you get into the game.

Platforming consists of jumping across surfaces, dashing through portals, using a grapple to swing over gaps, and utilizing the possession ability to teleport into various objects. However, the player can't do all these actions from the start, only being able to jump at first, so the game slowly feeds these abilities as you progress.

Not throwing all forms of platforming right from the start was a smart move by Luna Abyss, as it keeps gameplay fresh with each new level or area you encounter. For example, you're only jumping across platforms on the first level, keeping it really simple, but by the time you reach the final level, you are jumping, grappling, dashing, teleporting, etc., all in quick succession.

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While I genuinely enjoyed these platforming sections, I feel like they should have gone a step further and made them more challenging overall. Because even though they can become pretty complex, they rarely ever led to my death and meeting the game over screen. I would have liked these platforming sections to be longer, require more button inputs, and maybe even toss in enemies to defeat midair.

However, I really enjoyed that platforming abilities were treated as a tool for backtracking. There were plenty of times when I encountered a grapple hook or platform that I couldn't use yet because I didn't have the correct ability in my arsenal. This had me taking mental notes to return to this level later on in the game when I acquired the correct ability, as I knew there was a secret waiting for me.

Returning to these levels after getting the correct platforming ability would lead me to find an upgrade for a weapon, a data log that expands the lore of the game, or a health upgrade that allows me to take more damage in combat. Finding these secrets was genuinely rewarding, so I appreciate that they're an option, and I know completionists will appreciate it too.

Platforming is also implemented into boss fights, where some require you to grapple hook across the arena, over the enemy's attacks. For example, there's this one boss that shoots out red rays that can't be jumped over naturally, forcing you to use the grapple hooks to get high in the air. It's a nice touch to boss fights as it adds a layer of strategy, rather than just holding down the trigger and shooting.

Luna Abyss is a great first-person shooter that shines in its Bullet Hell aspects. While it never reaches the heights of the best of the genre, the combat feels fluid, and the need to switch between weapons to defeat certain enemies adds a layer of strategy that prevents gameplay from going stale. Each boss feels different, all filling the screen with a beautiful array of bullets, making Luna Abyss feel sometimes like a spectacle, especially by indie standards. Platforming is done very well, and while it rarely ever poses a challenge, I found myself having a great time jumping, grappling, and dashing across large gaps to progress further into the Abyss. The dark story is a standout that features unsettling twists, surprisingly great voice acting, and plenty of secrets for lore enthusiasts. Overall, Luna Abyss is perfect for those looking for a short, but focused, first-person shooter experience.