Cyclopean The Great Abyss, at first glance, appears to be meh at best. Take a closer look and you will see there is more to this retro inspired title than meets the eye. A mix of classic role-playing game (RPG) genres with minimalist graphics that somehow give more detail than they should helps set Cyclopean apart from the competition.
Dungeon Crawling Fans Your Time to Shine is Here
I know not everyone is a fan of dungeon crawlers, it seems the developer behind Cyclopean understands that as well. The mixing of genres helps give Cyclopean more depth than a straight dungeon crawler normally would have.
Traveling between dungeons is done in an overhead view allowing for “quick travel” if you will (I could not imagine traversing what is shown in the footage via first person view). I love dungeon crawlers and mainly focus my time on ones that reserve the first-person view for the actual dungeons.
Cyclopean appears to be squarely in the one step equals one square in the dungeon format. Just like the classics in this genre such as Alternate Reality: The Dungeon, Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, etc. This design choice makes it very easy to map out dungeons and keep your bearings if you are winging it in the “rogue-like” mode.
Graphically Less is More
Gamers today are spoiled, somewhat, with 2K or better graphics running at 120+ frames per second. While nice, to me, that takes so much of the allure of fantasy games away. There is very little left to your imagination in most modern titles.
Cyclopean has an art style that could almost fit in with ZX Spectrum style games – where black is used as a shader in quite unique and fascinating ways. There appears to be more detail than there really is while so much is left to you, as the adventurer, to fill in with your imagination. It is hard to describe but I really like this art style.
There is far more to Cyclopean based on the Steam page so take a moment to check it out. Cyclopean is currently in early access and will cost you about $9 USD with the current 10% discount.
What dungeon crawler has you up at night trying to figure out the puzzles and how to defeat enemies? Let me know in the comments below.