Sometimes you see a game and it grabs you right away. There’s a lot to be said about the importance of the first audiovisual impression a game can have, and how a fluid art style combined with a booming voice or crystal clear soundtrack can capture your heart. At the GDC Expo about two weeks ago, Luna Abyss was likely to be just that.
To learn more about the game, I sat down with creative director Benni Hill (don’t hum the tune) to discuss Bonsai Collection’s upcoming first-person bullet hell shooter. Where did this art style come from, and how do you effectively transfer the traditional 2D genre into a 3D game?
The game is a stunning collision of dark concrete and metal, dotted with pipes, stairs and mechanical horrors. You, as a prisoner with mysterious crimson eyes, are sent to Red Moon, a strange orbiting boy who appeared above Earth 250 years ago. There, you must serve your sentence as the eternally loud voice of your mechanical warden orders you to discover relics hidden within massive structures.
The game is full of solid inspiration, itself a narrative and thematic cocktail of BioShock, Nier Automata, and Homecoming. The Bonsai Collective itself is a development project made up of employees with a passion for the dark universe and high-octane action.
“The games Art Director Harry Corr and I are passionate about are more action-oriented games. We love dark and mysterious spaces – we’re big fans of NieR Autom ata, Dark Souls and Bloodborne Same thing. It’s a pivotal moment in our careers, yeah, let’s do this, make the game we love.”
According to Hill, the Bonsai Collective is a “world architecture first” team. In seeking to create the red moon and other elements, the team brought their personal love of classic Japanese media, including Evangelion and Blame, as well as Brutalist architecture, to create a unique aesthetic around which the rest of the game can be built.
Hill explains these initial inspirations: “There’s a lot of Brutalism in the game in the form of these huge concrete structures, and I’m really fascinated by Brutalist art and Brutalist architecture, especially Soviet architecture. Especially in the early 20th century, There are some amazing pieces, so much so that I have a stack of coffee books at home!”
Combined with the deep ruby lighting that makes the entire game pop, Hill claims this allows their small team to deliver a “compelling” high-quality look while also being manageable in the long run.
So, with the unique look locked down, where does the bullet hell gameplay come from? According to Hill, the desire to play to their strengths as world builders presented an opportunity: “We knew we didn’t want to do traditional shooters at the time, we wanted to do something more practical. So we made bullets, right? ?”
This has been developed over time, adding an “intrinsic and physical feel” to the lock-on as well as the bullet, connecting it to the world around it when navigating the arena in Luna Abyss. Stages need to be bigger so players can actually dodge incoming fire, and the AI has to be programmed in such a way that enemies will fire wave after wave of bullets just out of your sight. But at the end of the day, the team brings that bullet feeling.
The result of this work is a shooter where you have to keep your distance and focus more on dodging incoming fire than rushing in like in Doom Eternal. It was the first game I played, and despite being in a 20-minute slot on the GDC show floor, it really brought a bullet feel to the FPS genre.
After speaking with Hill and briefly interacting with the game at GDC, I wondered what exactly makes a game stand out in 2023 after decades of innovation in the FPS genre. Hill’s answer is the tried and true method – make a solid plan and people will come.
“The whole package has to be fun. It’s not just the core mechanics. I think you can try to find that golden egg and a mechanic as a starting point. For us, our background in world building and art allowed us to really dig into the Our aesthetic, and then other aspects, like our shooting mechanics, fit into that world, and it was discovered later.”
“I think creating the whole package and making it unique is what appeals to players, because they want to be in that world and engage interesting enemies. They want to engage in interesting content,” concluded Hill.
Sitting down to write this after playing the game for myself, Luna Abyss is easily the most memorable game I’ve played in recent memory. I can’t wait to try it out in full when it finally comes out.