Luna Abyss Hands-On Preview – DOOM + Returnal= A Good Time

Three years ago this coming April, Wccftech's Alessio Palumbo caught up with Kwalee Labs (formerly Bonsai Collective) to talk about their debut game, Luna Abyss. A UK-based game studio co-founded by Harry Corr, Benni Hill, and former Team17 producer, Hollie Emery, they started working together in 2019, setting out to create what would become a story-driven, first-person bullet-hell shooter (FPBHS) set in a dystopian world where you play as Fawkes, a prisoner stuck not just in the dreary prison of Luna, but in the middle of a mysterious prophecy.

While we still don't have an exact release date, back in December 2025, we got a 2026 release window. Now, after seven years in development, with a brand-new demo as part of the February 2026 Steam Next Fest, the full game will finally be in players' hands soon, on May 21, 2026.

If you've been following Luna Abyss, then you've probably already played the Sorrows Canyon Demo that's been available for a while now. I checked that demo out before trying out the new hotness, and I immediately felt its gameplay influences. It also made me more excited to jump into the brand-new Scourge Crater Demo ahead of its release.

NOTE: Steam Next Fest has officially kicked off, and alongside Luna Abyss, I've checked out a slew of demos worth playing this week. You can read about them here.

'DOOM + Returnal' feels like a bit of a reductive way to put it (particularly because when we spoke to the developers, they admitted it's not so hardcore as either of those games), but on a gameplay and visual level, it feels apt. You're shooting at enemies and jumping around 3D arenas, dodging a bullet-hell of brightly coloured orbs fired at you while you swap between a select arsenal of weapons with different uses that take advantage of different enemies' weak points. Each weapon was something you found while exploring your environment, while on a linear track that also sees you take an obscurely laid-out, yet still straightforward 3D platforming path to the next objective.

Driving you through these gameplay beats that'll feel similar to anyone who played the swath of brown, 'gritty' shooters that flooded the seventh generation of consoles is a disembodied voice (Aylin, in this case) you don't yet know you can trust, but have to, at least for now. Short cutscenes, codex entries you discover in the world, and banter between the player character and the mysterious voice drive the storytelling, with at least some NPCs. Though I've only met one other character between the Sorrows Canyon and Scourge Crater.

DOOM and Returnal might be the touchpoints that come to mind for me (in our interview with the development team, they actually called out the strikes in Destiny as a core inspiration), but you could realistically fill in your own two games, or just one title, that hits all of those beats I just went through. If you're familiar with shooters, particularly single-player shooters, you might feel like you've played a dozen games like Luna Abyss before, but that is not inherently a bad thing.

It's refreshing to play this off the back of trying out Highguard, yet another live-service shooter that is trying to get lightning to strike two feet away from where it was caught the last time. It's also nice to play a shooter that isn't trying to convince you to sign a lifetime contract, but a break from live service fatigue isn't the only reason to check out Luna Abyss.

For starters, I find myself more enamoured with the visual design in Luna Abyss the more the world sits with me. The scale of the prison and how it's presented create this feeling that this prison, which you feel like can't truly go on forever, might actually be a never-ending 'abyss.' That feeling is also reinforced by the game's lore, as the player character is technically a 'Scout,' sent out to explore and map areas of the prison that have not been documented.

Speaking of the game's lore and narrative, that's still a bit of a question mark. Two demos can only reveal so much, and without getting to see the rest of it, I can't exactly say I'm as enamoured with the story as I am with the world around me. But again, that's just how I feel after a couple of demos. There's surely plenty more to see, which I'm hoping will deliver something a little deeper than a surface-level dark sci-fi romp. Which seems to be the plan, at least according to what the studio told us when Wccftech spoke to them two and a half years ago.

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Though I didn't expect the game to be so chatty. The tone of some of the conversations heard between you and Aylin was definitely lighter than I would have expected, but it's not the worst thing. In the same way that playing Luna Abyss can provide a break from live service fatigue, the small bits of humour, whether that's between Aylina and Fawkes, or even in the creature and boss designs, visually and in what they say, are a welcome break from the drab of the world. Some of those moments even make everything else about Luna Abyss feel even creepier.

Unsurprisingly, outside of its visuals, it's the gameplay that pulls you into Luna Abyss. You have a dash that works on a short cooldown, you can sprint into a slide, double-jump, all while swapping between weapons, blasting enemies, and locking on to them one at a time to take them out as you avoid the barrage of floating orbs. And that's just how the game feels by the point you reach featured in the Scourge Crater demo. You're still missing at least one weapon on your weapon wheel, and there's potentially more movement mechanics for you to unlock.

It's all wound tight and reaches that sweet spot between sharpness and floatiness to create something that is a lot of fun to play. It's best exemplified in the new boss fight added at the end of the Scourge Crater demo, where you're constantly trying to dodge orbs and lasers coming at you from all sides while maintaining your focus on the boss to take it down.

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I also need to mention that I mostly played this demo on my ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X, where it ran extremely well without any real issues. A good sign for anyone eyeing Luna Abyss with nothing but aging PC hardware at their disposal, who is unable and/or unwilling to upgrade during the current memory crisis.

Altogether, Luna Abyss has a real shot at being one of the most entertaining shooters to hit the market in 2026. If it can keep its gameplay experience in that sweet spot throughout the entire time, without dragging the game's design pacing, then it'll be an extremely fun complete package. If its narrative can live up to its setup and world design, then it could land as not just one of the best indies in 2026, but one of the best games in 2026.

PC version tested.

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