Do you like cute characters exploring dark worlds? Then you might want to keep an eye on Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness, an upcoming game based on the manga/anime of the same name by Akihito Tsukushi. Developed by Spike Chunsoft, Made in Abyss will be released this fall on the Switch, PS4, and Steam.
The series focuses on Riko, an orphan living in a town on the perimeter of a giant pit — the titular Abyss. Like other manga and anime inspired by old-school PC games like Wizardry and tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons, Made in Abyss sees the characters questing down into a seemingly-endless dungeon in search of treasure. There’s a wrinkle here, though, in that descending into the earth afflicts explorers with the Curse of the Abyss, and returning to the surface can prove challenging — sort of like a magical version of the bends.
It’s a simple premise, but the series has won a great deal of acclaim. It took Best Anime of the Year in Crunchyroll’s 2018 Anime Awards, and the original manga was nominated for the 11th annual Manga Taishō awards, alongside books like The Promised Neverland and Beastars. People can’t get enough of these kids fighting monsters in a mysterious dungeon inspired by Buddhist conceptions of hell, it seems.
So what about the game itself? Well, Binary Star Falling into Darkness looks to be a dungeon crawler where players descend into the Abyss to battle monsters and recover relics. Interestingly for an anime-based game, you don’t seem to be playing as the existing protagonists. Rather, you’ll make your own character and fight alongside familiar faces as a rookie Cave Raider. The game features an original story by Tsukushi, and looks like it’s going to maintain the tone of the source material — despite the cutesy appearance, it’s rated M for Violence and Blood and Gore. One scene in the trailer shows a monster feasting on the guts of a fallen warrior and another shows the main character puking blood, so, yeah, this one is maybe not for the squeamish.
Graphically, Made in Abyss seems to have the same kind of style as a lot of anime adaptations — a ton of effort has clearly gone into adapting the visual style of the characters, while the world they’re exploring looks… well, a little rough. That may not matter much to fans of the series, though.
We don’t have a specific release date for Made in Abyss yet — the game is coming out sometime this fall. Spike Chunsoft is releasing standard and collector’s edition versions of the game, with the latter including a “Cave-Raiding Notebook” and a 24×36″ cloth poster.
Anime video game adaptations are somewhat hit and miss, with some being little more than licensed cash-ins and others being enjoyable experiences that capture the spirit of the original work. I know next to nothing about Made in Abyss, but I like the approach of creating your own character to play in the world. That feature made Dragon Ball Xenoverse a dream come true for fans of that series, and maybe Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness will be the same for fans of Tsukushi’s dark dungeon crawler.
