Roguelike FPS Abyssus Gets the Speargun It Always Needed in Patch 1.2

DoubleMoose Games has released update 1.2 for Abyssus, the nautically themed roguelike first-person shooter that launched in August last year. The headline addition is a harpoon gun — a weapon whose absence from the original release was conspicuous given the game's underwater setting. The patch also adds a new ability, new attack patterns for three existing bosses, and a set of cosmetic items. To mark the release, DoubleMoose has cut the game's price by 30 percent, bringing it to $17.50 or £15 until March 12.

Abyssus puts players in a diving suit as a Brinehunter, fighting through underwater environments with weapons that include chain-lightning revolvers and shotguns that strike enemies with ghosts. The game arrived with a functional FPS-roguelike hybrid structure that most games attempting that combination fail to pull off. First-person shooting and roguelike randomisation typically produce mushy combat and uneven pacing. Abyssus avoided both, threading the power curve of a roguelike into conventional gunfighting without losing the feel of either genre.

The harpoon gun in update 1.2 operates as a slow-firing, heavy-hitting weapon built to function at any range. Its primary fire builds a combo-point gauge on the hunter. When the gauge is full, the secondary fire consumes all accumulated points and releases a single high-damage attack. The weapon does not appear to pin enemies to surfaces, which removes one of the more satisfying applications of a speargun in an FPS context — a technique that games like Painkiller and FEAR used to memorable effect.

DoubleMoose compensates with the Smiting Spear, a new ability added alongside the harpoon gun. It lets players throw a spectral polearm that embeds in whatever it strikes, dealing continuous damage to a small area around the impact point. DoubleMoose describes it as useful for zone denial and disrupting enemy clusters. The practical application against larger enemies is clear: embed the spear and let it deal passive damage while clearing smaller threats around it. Managing that balance between big and small enemies was one of the harder problems in Abyssus' later stages, particularly in solo play.

I think the Smiting Spear addresses a real gap in how the game handles multi-target encounters — it gives players a way to divide their attention without losing damage on the priority target. The harpoon gun and the ability function as a pair, and that pairing gives the weapon more purpose than it would have as a standalone addition.

The three boss pattern additions are harder to evaluate without playing them. The existing bosses already ran varied attack sequences, at least when encountered in solo sessions. Multiplayer likely creates different pressure, and the new patterns may be calibrated for groups rather than single players. The patch notes do not specify whether the patterns appear only at higher difficulties or are present across all modes.

Abyssus currently sits alongside a crowded field of FPS releases from the past year. I see it as a game that earns its place not through spectacle but through mechanical precision — the roguelike integration works in ways that most genre-blend attempts do not, and update 1.2 extends that foundation rather than rewriting it. The 30 percent discount running until March 12 makes it a lower-commitment entry point for anyone who passed on it at launch.

The original BioShock skipped harpoon-based combat entirely. BioShock 2 corrected that. Abyssus launched without a speargun in an underwater FPS and has now corrected the same oversight. The correction took about seven months.

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