I got to play End of Abyss at last year’s Summer Game Fest Play Days event, and I liked it just fine. It was a moody, atmospheric, creepy, and very good-looking twin-stick metroidvania played from an isometric perspective. It didn’t leave a lasting impression on me, though, if I’m being honest.

What a difference a year can make.

This year’s near-final build of End of Abyss – it’s due to ship on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S on October 1 – has been punched up in nearly every way. Visually, its Unreal Engine 5-powered look is crisper and creepier – to say nothing of its skin-crawling creature design. The fact that members of the Section 9 Interactive development team previously worked on Little Nightmares is evident in what I played. Gameplay-wise, its twin-stick controls felt familiar and responsive; you can easily move with the left stick, aim with the right stick, shoot with the right trigger, and dodge-roll with the left trigger. Its multi-level depths offer secrets, shortcuts, and places you’ll need to come back to later. And the actual combat – something the Little Nightmares games never really had – is absolutely no joke, in the best of ways.

In End of Abyss, you play Cel as you explore a mysterious underground compound to discover what the hell is really going on down there. I didn’t see any story elements in the 30-minute demo I played, so hopefully the plot is delivered in a meaningful way as you go, but for the purposes of my short hands-on session, I was more than enthralled by the gameplay. You’ve got a simple pistol that has unlimited ammo, though clips still run dry and you’ll need to wait for your next rounds to recharge, so you can’t just fire it endlessly. I only got one other weapon, which was a shotgun whose shells were quite difficult to come by. The trade-off, of course, is that they packed a hell of a punch.

The actual combat – something the Little Nightmares games never really had – is absolutely no joke, in the best of ways.“

I mostly stuck to the pistol as I snaked my way through a couple different floors of the subterranean facility, keeping my distance and aiming carefully with my right thumbstick in order to take down the low-level zombie-like grabbers from far away. In fact, I often dodge-rolled right out of the room and simply waited for my target to shamble into view from the next screen over. It was a mostly effective strategy.

I saved my limited shells and very limited grenades for the boss fight at the end of my demo. I was locked in a round room with a giant centipede-like monstrosity that drained a ton of my health bar if I lingered too close where it could surround me like a coil and squeeze. I had to keep moving and hope that when it made a pass and scurried by me that it did so close enough for me to give it the full brunt of my shotgun blast, but far enough away that it didn’t wrap me up. I gave it a few tries and knocked about half of its health bar down before my time ran out and I had to put the controller down. The developer overseeing my demo told me that hardly anybody else who played that day had done as well as I had; maybe he was just being nice, but it was reassuring.

Even with just this small slice, I left my demo confident that End of Abyss is going to be a very challenging, no-holds-barred metroidvania set in a downright disturbing facility. It might have a heck of a time standing out from the crowd, given its release date, but I think that those who give it a chance will be pleasantly surprised by what a rich world and tough task are waiting for them.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of both IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our semi-retired interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.