Absolum is a new game developed by Guard Crush Games studios, which also contributed to the creation of Streets of Rage 4 alongside Lizardcube. For three years, Absolum has been under production, with Guard Crush Games continuing to receive support from DotEmu for publishing and development assistance. The studio focuses on what they do best: beat’em all or beat’em up, whichever term you prefer. Absolum is designed as a tribute to Golden Axe, another beat’em up game from the genre’s golden age in the 1990s. The first trailer highlights the game’s universe and introduces several characters while showing brief gameplay footage, revealing their distinctive artistic style similar to that of Streets of Rage 4. However, Lizardcube is not handling the art for Absolum this time; instead, Supamonks, known for video game development and numerous music video projects, is responsible for it.
Among the challenges that Absolum aims to address are a variety of paths to explore, quests to follow, and dialogues to listen to through characters encountered during its journey. In combat, players can choose from four fighters, noting that one can certainly embark on the adventure solo or with two others, either locally via couch gaming or online. Of the four announced warriors, two are visible in the first trailer: Galandra, an agile fighter wielding a particularly effective close-combat sword, and Karl, a sturdy dwarf with devastating punches and a rifle for taking down enemies at a distance. It remains to be seen how this will all function in practice. No release date or platform has been revealed, but given DotEmu’s history, it is expected that the game will be available on all platforms. Between announcement and release, several years may pass, so mark your calendars for at least 2026, no sooner…
