Starless Abyss review

Konafa Games’ Starless Abyss is a well-crafted blend of deckbuilding strategy, roguelike exploration, and Lovecraftian creepiness set against a backdrop of deep-space. From the game’s opening moments, it’s clear this is a game designed not just to challenge players, but to immerse them fully in a cold, dying universe where survival and your sanity is never guaranteed.

Smart Gameplay

In Starless Abyss, you pilot a battered ship through procedurally generated sectors of space, each filled with hostile encounters and abandoned relics. The core gameplay loop revolves around building and managing a customizable deck of cards, which represents your ship’s weapons, maneuvers, systems, and experimental tech.

Combat is turn-based and unflinchingly tactical. You’ll carefully balance your ship’s energy, shields, and heat levels while playing attack, defense, and utility cards to outwit a growing onslaught of increasingly dangerous foes. Unlike many card games, there’s a constant feeling of scarcity. Energy is limited, repairs are costly, heat is a constant headache, and mistakes almost always push you toward defeat.

Outside of combat, you’ll make tough choices on a map. You can salvage wrecks, take risky shortcuts through unstable sectors, or gamble on unknown signals. Every decision can either extend or cut your life short, generating a palpable sense of tension.

Deckbuilding Depth

Konafa Games has made Abyss’ deckbuilding systems intricate. Pleasingly, you can scrap cards for resources, modify existing ones during your run, or implant alien techmology onto your systems for interesting new effects. To keep you on your toes, some cards mutate under certain conditions. So, a standard missile barrage might evolve into a viral payload if used during a radiation storm.

Meanwhile, the inclusion of entropy adds a remarkable twist. As your ship survives longer, some cards “decay” naturally, so you’ll have to adapt your strategy rather than relying on a static build. What’s brilliant is how Starless Abyss encourages you not just to work toward a plan but also to deal creativity to chaos.

Roguelike Structure

Every run feels distinct thanks to handcrafted event pools combined with procedural generation. There’s a light meta-progression, from unlocking new ships and pilots, as well as starting relics, and encounter types. But nicely, it doesn’t dilute the brutal integrity of each run.

When you die (and you will), it feels earned. Success comes from mastery: understanding synergies, recognizing warning signs, and embracing adaptability. As you plunge deeper into the Abyss, environmental modifiers stack. Navigating sectors with electromagnetic storms or flesh-growth anomalies warping the battlefield forces you to shift your entire approach.

Atmosphere and Presentation

The game’s aesthetic is minimalistic, glitchy, and cold. User interface elements jitter and break in small ways during stressful events, reinforcing the feeling that your ship, your systems, and even reality itself are fraying at the edges. The soundtrack is an eerie, droning companion along your journey, blending synth washes with distorted frequencies and resonating echoes. It’s a world that feels large but also cruel and lonely.

Unfortunately, Abyss has a few minor drawbacks. Difficulty spikes can sometimes feel abrupt, especially when facing rare enemies early due to unlucky map rolls. Meanwhile, on portable PCs, UI readability can suffer, especially when too many effects and modifiers clutter the screen. Lastly, new players might feel overwhelmed at first, due to the sheer number of mechanics introduced with relatively few tutorials. Still, these issues are minor compared to the depth and atmosphere the game delivers.

Conclusion

Konafa Games has crafted something special with Starless Abyss: a dense, punishing, but deeply rewarding experience that stays with you long after a run ends. It combines the best parts of tactical deckbuilders and roguelike adventure, while layering on a thick atmosphere of dread and discovery.

Starless Abyss was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.