Absolum

Written by Jeremy Duff on 10/9/2025 for PC  

I have not been shy about my love of the beat ’em up genre. It’s a genre I have loved since the '80s and I am always excited to check out new entries in modern gaming. Add that to my recently found love for roguelikes and you have the perfect description of my ADHD-like gaming habit(s). I like to play games in short spurts, repeatedly. A game that allows me to do quick runs, but also pushes me to come back for more, with a healthy dose of action is a dream come true. That might be a perfect description of Absolum.

It really helps that these two genres go together like peanut butter and jelly. A good beat ’em up is fast paced, filled with action, and oozes replayability. These are the things that also make a great roguelike. It is clear from the beginning that the developers of Absolum recognize this and that is exactly what they focus on in crafting this experience.

Sure, there is a story here, but it simply serves to set the scene. You will get glimpses of it throughout the adventure, as short animated sequences that bridge the levels together. You start as one of two members of a burgeoning rebellion and almost immediately rescue the All Mother from the clenches of the dark forces that are attempting to take over the world. Think of her as Mother Earth, in a sense. She is the One who brings life to the world and keeps it beautiful and growing. The dark forces are looking to suck all the light and life out of the world and their goal was to imprison her so that they could take her creation for all it could offer to feed their greed.

Now that she has been freed, she has offered you a deal to fight for her to take down these forces. If you choose to do so, she promises you will never fall as she will always breathe life back into you should the enemy prevail. In a sense, they have no way of winning because there is no end to you. You'll soon find, however, that it's all about the journey rather than the destination.

You will start as one of two members of the rebellion, Galandra or Karl. Galandra is a swordsman, a straightforward jack-of-all-trades pugilist who focuses on straight hand-to-hand combat. Karl is a bit similar, but a little more down and dirty. As a dwarf, his stature may be small, but he packs an incredible punch and is all about strength, both in hitting and throwing enemies and objects alike. As you go on with your adventure you will recruit other members to your cause whom you can control in subsequent playthroughs.

There's Brome, a wizard frog who would prefer not to get his hands dirty but fights from a distance using his powers. Then there is Cider, who is something of a mix of man and machine. As an augmented individual, their mechanical appendages give them a fast-paced quick in-and-out fighting style that has them flying all over the screen attacking multiple enemies at once.

With each having a unique base to their styles, it is the advancements and powers that the game offers you that lets you tweak each one to his style all your own. Having only four characters to play seems a bit short-sighted, but the systems that we’ll discuss give you the chance to make it seem like there is a lot more variety than just the four. I do hope that additional characters are something that we may see down the road.

Remember, Absolum is a roguelike. That means you will be playing by completing runs, death is inevitable, and the goal is to earn more strength and tools to utilize in future runs to make it a little further. Absolum gives that to you in a couple of ways.

Within each run, you get to benefit from using trinkets and rituals. These are rewarded regularly as you complete each battle or scene. Trinkets are like equipment, each of which will buff your character’s different traits, making you physically stronger. They will buff things like your attack power, character speed, damage from throwing, damage against lone enemies or mobs, and many others. You can pick up the same trinket multiple times, which allows you to fine tune your arsenal. If you want to make a true-throwable build, you can focus on trying to obtain nothing but trinkets that both increase the damage of your throwables as well as the amount that are spawned around you. The choice is yours, but you do have to remember that the options you’re offered in these trinkets are purely random.

You never really know what choices are going to await you the next time they are presented. There is also a rarity system in play, making some trinkets more valuable and rarer than others. Your characters have traits, such as luck, that can help tip the scales in your favor, but ultimately it is luck of the draw, so you have to be willing to adapt as things progress.

Rituals, however, are where the difference is truly made. It is using rituals that you really start to craft a unique build; think of rituals as elemental effects that Mother will offer you for your attacks and physical feats. These can be added to your attacks, your movement and traversal options, and even as additional attacks. The rituals fall under a variety of different elemental classes, including fire, thunder, water, wind, necromancy, and even altering time. These just happen to be a few of the elements offered in the game. There are quite a bit more to unlock—some even after you've beaten it for the first time (just know that the first time is not the end).

This all sits on top of a solid beat ’em up foundation where you have two attack buttons (normal and secondary), jump, and run/dash. Within those options you can also parry and deflect enemy attacks. Mastering the parries and deflects is especially important and can make for some very epic battle scenes once you have mastered them.

There are also a ton of breakable objects throughout the world, which often leave behind throwable objects or food in the debris, as well as a variety of mounts that you'll come across that will give you the upper hand in battle. I'm still seeing a few new things scattered as I'm entering the end game!

The world is also filled with branching paths, so don’t expect a straightforward journey from point A to B. These come from actual forks in the road as well as optional conversations that you can have with characters that may spawn side missions or diversions from your standard path. This doesn’t just happen on your individual runs either. I have often seen decisions that I have made on one run come back to haunt or help me on a future one. It really does feel like a different playthrough every time.

The game really reminds me a lot of Vanillaware’s classic Dragon's Crown, which I adored when I reviewed it many years ago on several platforms (PlayStation 3 review, PlayStation Vita review).

Things in Absolum feel very simple at first, but it is in the repetitive nature and the advancement of your character that the game really opens. I started off extremely frustrated, struggling to make it past the first boss battle. I wasn’t seeing where the progression was to be found. But then I started focusing on the build of my character rather than just grabbing the coolest looking trinket or ritual. I started making my selections with a purpose, and the result opened up the strategy in Absolum.

That earlier frustration was felt with the combat. It felt too limited and simple early on. You really must take advantage of the rituals to reveal the variety that is buried here. There are a ton of options for you to choose from, and being a jack of all trades doesn’t really serve you best. You should level and play with focus and intent. This results in a level of strategy that I wasn’t expecting from a beat ’em up. It was something that I grew to appreciate in the end.

They will likely become even more important after the game launches and the online co-op becomes available. In the pre-release build, I was held to couch co-op partners and hireable NPC companions in the game; I am really looking forward to seeing what the experience is like when I can join up with dedicated players online, as then I think there can be some interesting synergies amongst the powers and rituals.

Absolum is a fantastic blend of the beat ’em up and roguelike genres. The action is fast-paced, gameplay has a lot of depth, and the result is almost endless replayability. While I would have liked to see more playable characters, the Ritual system really makes the cast feel more diverse and offers options for players of all styles. The goal here is thoughtful progression and experimentation, and that results in the best experience. It can be frustrating at first, but Absolum rewards players who embrace its layered mechanics. All these things blend nicely to offer a game that is a a standout entry in both genres.