Having played End of Abyss at last year’s Summer Game Fest, I had a good idea of what I should expect. The game is a top-down Metroidvania roguelike that tasks you with exploring a seemingly abandoned facility filled to the brim with creatures out of nightmares.
Something has transformed everyone in the facility into abominations, and you are the one who must deal with it. Drawing on some of the best works of horror and science fiction, the game is shaping up to be truly interesting and nerve-wracking.
Getting to take another shot at the game, I immediately fell back in love with the experience and got a true sense of what it would feel like when it finally releases. Taking time out of his busy SGF schedule, co-founder of Section 9, Mattias Ottvall, walks us through how the game came to be, what players should expect when they dive in and the many inspirations for the title.
So, let’s just start off with how End of Abyss came to be.
Mattias Ottvall: Yeah, at the beginning it was my brother and me. We were at Tarsier Studios, and we wanted just to make our own thing after a bunch of years.
Throughout our lives, we’ve been prototyping different ideas, and once we started a new company, we had to choose one of those prototypes to get moving with. We brought in a third person from Tarsier as well, Gustav, and we chose this one as our prototype to get going with.
It was a bit different back then. It was more like an action, straight-up action, top-down shooter, and it became this more hybrid of other more atmospheric games.
Okay, and how long has End of Abyss been in development?
Mattias Ottvall: If you count the prototyping time, it’s like full production, I would say four years.
Okay, so you mentioned End of Abyss started off as more of an action game. What steps did you take to get it from that action game point of view to this kind of Metroidvania, more hardcore kind of experience?
Mattias Ottvall: I think one of the things we did when we chose this was, there’s a good foundation of the controls and the dodge-and-roll mechanics, like evading and shooting. But the other guys, they’re two artists, and they really like atmosphere, and they like stuff like Alien and sci-fi and stuff. So it just transferred into more of that. And then we just got to thinking, okay, there aren’t that many Metroidvanias that are top-down.
See, well, we already have an interesting camera angle. We have something going on, but then on top of that, we need some kind of gameplay system. And Metroidvanias that we love- anything from the old Metroid to new Metroidvanias– that’s kind of the transition it went through.
So, could you just tell me a little bit about End of Abyss‘s purpose? What are you doing? What’s going on? What are people experiencing when they first jump into this experience?
Mattias Ottvall: Yeah, you start the game as this cell. She is a young combat technician. You arrive at this place, an underground, seemingly derelict facility, with a crew, and you are lower-ranked. You do not know as much as the other guys. You will uncover the truth as you progress through the game.
As you see in this demo, this is where you split off from the group, and things start to unravel step by step. I think if you like exploration and tense combat, this is the game for you. I think that’s our focus points in this game, and I think we got it to a good place.
You mentioned End of Abyss evolved during development. Did you go from action to directing this, or were there multiple stages in between that kind of took you to where you are now?
Mattias Ottvall: Yeah, there has been a lot of iteration back and forth. At some point, maybe it went more toward action. At some point, it went more to the slower pace. I think we kind of quickly went to something like this, and it’s been a series of smaller iterations. It has been very much focused on the enemies and the areas you are supposed to move around in.
As we are in a type of facility or complex, we want areas that are not too similar. You do not just want concrete or whatever it is. We want something new as you arrive in new areas. Those were the main iterations, I think, that took a lot of time to get right.
What are some of the inspirations that helped form this idea, and the identity End of Abyss has now?
Mattias Ottvall: Yeah, I think a lot of it comes from us growing up with movies, anime and games we played back then. For specifics, I have Alien and The Thing. We have anime like Akira and Ghost in the Shell, and a bunch of games.
And I think the inspiration is not so much about specific gameplay systems or games per se, but more about the feeling they evoked at the time, which we still think back to. We hope that is something we can give now in our type of experience.
So when people do dive deeper into End of Abyss, what should they expect? What kind of monsters, what kind of thrills, scares, etc.? Without spoiling anything, give people an idea. Sell the game to them, basically.
Mattias Ottvall: Yeah, I think we have a lot of different variants of our base enemy, and then they kind of mutate into different variants, as you see here. They also, what do you say, not adapt, but they behave differently in different environments. A lot of them have different gameplay features, like the neck creature you saw, or the hand. We have several bosses who all have distinct behaviours and looks. I think we have a good variety of enemies and challenges.
So now you’re built with Unreal, right?
Mattias Ottvall: Yeah, yeah.
Can you tell me a bit about what that allowed you to do in the game and why you chose that engine?
Mattias Ottvall: I think already back in the days at Tarsier, when we started with Unreal Engine 4, they started to be open source and free, right? At least free to a certain point to access. That was just a whole new beginning of using this engine, and it really allowed us to prototype quickly and also get really good results, especially graphics results.
It looks stunning.
Mattias Ottvall: It’s something that you can get out of that engine. And I think the best thing about Unreal Engine is that it allows all disciplines to work really well: design, graphics and coders. The team back home, they’re in their zone, and we can work really well together.
How big is the team?
Mattias Ottvall: We’re 9 or 10 people, and we’ve been lucky enough to find people, not just people who like this type of game, but they were also very keen on iterating and working with us to make the best possible game. They contribute a lot to the project.
Playing End of Abyss, I noticed how tight the controls felt. It felt very responsive, very immediate. You knew what you were doing anytime you were doing anything. How important was that to the overall experience, getting to this point?
Mattias Ottvall: It was super important, and I think as we had our prototype, that was kind of the base of the whole game. We had something where we felt that, okay, with this camera angle, and then you have an experience, or like a twin-stick shooter-ish setup, which felt like it was kind of smooth, or like you can control it well, and not too hard to master, I think.
That was the thing we tried to get right throughout the production. Even if we made it a little slower, a little more atmospheric, a little more horror, we still wanted it to be that kind of tight experience.
Okay. And how long will the experience be when people finally get their hands on End of Abyss?
Mattias Ottvall: We have done quite a lot of playtesting, and we have our internal numbers. We don’t want to spoil those numbers, but there will be a bunch of hours to poke around in this game.
I think it varies a lot. If you happen to find the main path and stick on the main path and just plow through it, that takes you through the game much faster, of course. And if you like to explore and find upgrade materials or find new areas, it varies a lot in that way.
I’m noticing a lot of horror elements, a lot of backtracking, figuring out where to go. Are you trying to get both people who love Metroidvanias and love that kind of exploration, and people who just love visceral, edge-of-your-seat horror? Are you trying to get everyone at the same time?
Mattias Ottvall: I think I would say, I’m speaking for myself, but I think for the team as well, that we really like the Metroidvania aspect. I think the horror element comes more from getting this tense feeling, and it’s really good for ambush attacks, and it’s good for keeping you on the edge.
So it’s more a complement to the Metroidvania. Make the Metroidvania, and make it a bit unique, because there are not so many games that mix that, right? I think it’s a complement, and it’s a good tool to have to make a game more interesting and more like a pressure when you roam around these areas.
Awesome. Now, just wrapping up, for anyone that might be eager to jump into End of Abyss, with everything they’ve seen from the trailers; what’s one thing you could tell them to sell them on picking this up when it releases?
Mattias Ottvall: I think that we have a really good mix of genres blended together. It was kind of a gamble when we tried it out, but I think that’s something that came along really well. So I think you will have quite a unique experience when you play it.
End of Abyss releases on October 1, 2026, on the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5 and XBOX Series X|S.
