While it isn’t unusual for popular, high-profile titles to have imitators, I find it interesting that even smaller-scale hits can seem to have their own influence at times as well. While it’s very cool to see the success of the adaptation of Iron Lung in movie theaters, I’ll admit that I was less impressed with how it played and performed on the Switch. An interesting story, and a cool idea, but in terms of playing I’ll admit that I was underwhelmed to say the least. While I don’t know that The Abyss’s Last Breath was directly inspired by that effort, the moment I loaded it up, it became difficult not to run with that assumption.

In it, you’ll be playing as John, the lone volunteer who signed up to do the seemingly impossible, diving deep into the ocean to the edge of the Earth’s core to retrieve a powerful energy source. While this would already be a dangerous and difficult mission to begin with, the fact that your equipment is quite primitive, and you seem to be struggling to hold onto your sanity hardly makes anything better. Oh, and there seem to be dangers lurking in the deep as well… or is it all just in your head?

The tug of war here is between the experience of playing the game, blending psychological horror, a pervasive sense of dread, and sometimes unnerving imagery, with what can be pretty pedestrian play at times. If you accept that the big picture experience is what’s most vital, you could very well vibe with it all, but if you tend to get caught up in weaknesses in the moment with lackluster gameplay, it could be a disaster. Given the fact that you’re not given very much information on how to operate your sub, simplicity and some familiarity aren’t a bad thing though, and getting intuitively dialed in to how the game plays with old-school classics like Simon, helping to make them a little more fresh, is at least somewhat rewarding. The game still has some shortcomings, but given the state of many indie horror games on the system, this still manages to shine as a decent effort by comparison.