• Price: $19.99 USD
• Developer: Orange Pylon Games
• Publisher: DANGEN Entertainment
• Release Date: September 28, 2023

A review code was kindly provided by DANGEN Entertainment on behalf of Orange Pylon Games. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Abomi Nation was one of my most anticipated games in September. It’s a roguelike monster-taming RPG inspired by the Nuzlocke challenge; every playthrough is different, with a new island generated for each run. Replayability and customization are supposed to be important aspects of the game. Sounds good to me (and so does the name)!

When you start a new game, there are a lot of possible choices to make. There are 4 difficulty modes: Casual, Normal, Brutal, and Custom. You can decide on permadeath for every difficulty, although starting a Custom game also involves deciding on:

• Level scaling
• Abomi Randomization
• Preventing Duplicate Species Encounters
• New Abomi Choices (random choice of 1 vs 2 vs any Abomi for new members)
• How many bosses until the final boss challenge
• Starting level
• Starting Abomis
• If you want a completely random run
• Level cap

Abomi Nation is apparently intended to be played with permadeath on; however, they still let you choose to turn it off. I really appreciate it when developers keep options open for all play styles like this. Normally I’d play with permadeath off, but I decided to challenge myself and see how it worked here.

The game opens with 3 Abomis searching for the Light Spirit’s statue. Over the centuries of Abomi Nation’s existence, there’s been an unending conflict between the Light and Dark Spirits. Every 100 years they choose some Abomis to represent them against each other to determine the fate of the island. The Dark Spirit wants the Abomis to be “strong” and fight, while the Light Spirit wants them to live in harmony.

The 3 Abomis end up running into the Light Spirit, who says that only one of them has the necessary light in them to fight the darkness. Then you get to choose which one you want to use. The Abomis are all so cute in their “storybook” art style – it was hard to pick just one in the beginning! You even get to name your Abomis.

Once you’ve chosen your starter Abomi, you must find more Abomis to add to your team. When you enter some wild areas, you’ll be given a new Abomi (or you can choose if you started a custom playthrough). You then get to fight the new Abomi first – or protect them from an aggressor – before they’ll join your team. I was a little disappointed that we couldn’t recruit at will, but I suppose it makes sense to limit the recruits given the permadeath feature.

There are no random encounters; enemies appear on the map. Usually only one or two opponents show up per area, and defeating the main enemy immediately respawns a new Abomi on the map.

Battles consist of 1-on-1 turn-based combat (although a few moves can hit your other Abomis in the background). Your Abomis have 4 moves plus a regular attack to use, and they have elemental affinities from a selection of air, earth, fire, ice, lightning, neutral, and plant types. Some have dual-typing – even if those types oppose each other (i.e. fire and water). I did think that it may have been a bit more interesting if additional types were included.

Their basic attacks are weak but cost no mana to use. Your Abomis can learn physical and special attack moves for their type(s) and even some moves outside of their affinity if they are capable of doing so. They keep every move they’ve learned, and you can swap their moves out when you feel like changing things up. Instead of mana points for individual moves, they have an overall pool of mana points. And if you run out of MP, you can still use moves that cost MP at the cost of some HP.

Battles really can be pretty challenging – this isn’t really a game where you can just grind enough and brute-force your way through by over-leveling. You have to actually pay attention to your opponents’ typing and make sure they won’t wipe out your Abomis in a turn or two. (I lost a few team members in the beginning like that.) Thankfully, some of your Abomis’ HP and MP will be restored at the end of each battle.

I really like that we can check our Abomis’ stats and the Abomi Archives (= Dex) in battle to learn more about them and their weaknesses. The game also displays the enemy Abomis’ stats in battle so you can see if you should use a physical or special attack for more effectiveness.

You can decide whether you want to see damage projections for different skills before using them, which is another helpful feature! And when it comes to grinding, you level up your Abomis as a team. They don’t need to be leveled up individually, and those who join your team do so at your current level too. It seems that a key element of Abomi Nation is convenience, which helps to mitigate the difficulties involved with permadeath.

Strengthening your Abomis can feel a little “grindy” sometimes, though. It seemed like it took longer than necessary to get to the next level once I got around level 20 or so in each run. The amount of currency you earn from each battle also felt fairly low. When you arrive at the small towns, you can spend that currency on healing items, tablets that automatically teach abilities to all Abomis capable of learning them, and items for the Abomis to hold.

Another way of customizing your team is manipulating their stats. Abomis have Natures and Abilities just like in Pokémon. Towns often have an Abomi who’s willing to change your Abomis’ Natures…for a price. Mini games offer you the chance to win stat-increasing items at the risk of permanently decreasing a stat if you lose. To be honest, I didn’t love most of the mini games, although I appreciated the effort.

Evolving your Abomis, of course, would be another method of toughening them up. It’s not just a matter of getting them to a certain level though. They all have specific requirements for evolution, and you have to evolve them in battle using Evolution Crystals.

One may have you use [“Element”] type moves X times, and some may have 2 more conditions besides the required level. Others are trickier; I had some Abomis that needed to be in “Shock” condition or at/under half of their HP. I mistakenly thought they just had to have fulfilled that condition at some point, but they actually need to meet it at the time of evolution in battle. That could have been made more clear. But overall I really enjoyed the more complex evolution system than I’m used to in most monster-taming games.

The last way to enhance your Abomis is through pairing them as partners. Your Abomis’ friendship levels will increase as you go along, and you can choose to set them as pals, best friends, or partners depending on what percentage of their friendship meter is full. This function gives benefits such as additional attack power, never taking critical damage with their partner at their side in battle, or permanent stat increases.

It took me 4 or 5 runs to really get used to everything, so I sadly lost my darling Abomis in the failed runs. 😢 I absolutely loved how they handle your slain Abomis. You can’t revive them with permadeath turned on, but their spirits can live on through a code that’s generated, which you can copy down and share with other players on social media. That’s really cool!

Also, you earn a special currency for each run – even if you failed, and you can choose to spend some of that currency to continue a failed run with permadeath turned off. This is yet another great way the game allows you to customize your playthroughs. I chose to save that currency for the Temporal Store on the main menu, where you can spend it to unlock content such as new Abomis, areas, and items for future runs. (Incidentally, the main menu also includes an Achievements section!)

Eventually I managed to complete a run after continuing when I was defeated. The plot isn’t expansive, but it’s cute and the dialogue made me laugh. Regarding the in-game text, there were some repetitive lines here and there, and a bigger issue was the size and font style of the text in the menus. I found it difficult to read the descriptions for the Abomis’ abilities, and it could be hard to see the control explanations properly there as well.

I think my main issues were the menu legibility and the game crashing. I waited to play more runs until after the update went live, which definitely improved the game’s performance. However, it does still occasionally crash here and there. That being said, the game’s auto save function came in handy here, as it saves on every screen transition. So I never lost any progress.

Other than that, I only had minor critiques on the limited Abomi typing, the “grindy” feeling, and the mini games. I really don’t have any major complaints. You can really tell that a lot of effort and passion was put into this. The Abomi designs – which include crossover characters from Bug Fables and Disc Creatures – are just so visually appealing. And as someone who delights in coming up with terrible amazing puns, names like “Giraffodil” for a plant-type giraffe Abomi filled me with joy.

They really thought about how to appeal to Nuzlocke and roguelike fans and those who usually prefer an easier experience. There are a lot of cool and convenient mechanics, and with the amount of customization in the game, they really understood how the power of choice opens the experience to more players.

I generally don’t like to make things harder on myself than they have to be when I play video games, but the game’s description was appealing enough to pique my interest and get me to try the harder options. Abomi Nation is worthy of celebration, and I plan to keep playing to unlock everything.

8.5/10