May was a remarkably busy month for high-profile game releases, which could explain why Luna Abyss‘ launch went relatively unnoticed on PC and current-gen consoles. It’s a sci-fi bullet-hell shooter that seemed to review pretty well, but despite that, the entire development team at Kwalee Labs has been laid off.
Kwalee Labs CEO Hollie Emery announced the news on LinkedIn, revealing that the entire team has been made redundant following a decision that was “completely outside of their control”.
“We’re enamoured by the love and support [Luna Abyss] received both by our industry and critically by journalists and media,” Emery wrote. “Whilst we faced many challenges along the way, it has been the highlight of our c areers – and we are incredibly proud that it has finally seen the light of day (thank you to everyone who believed in us!).
“Unfortunately as of yesterday, the entire team has been made redundant; a decision that was completely outside of our control. As a result, the entire team are available for work as of today.”
Luna Abyss currently has a ‘very positive’ user rating on Steam after 599 reviews, though its all-time peak concurrent player count 23 days ago was just 317 people. Given that, it’s likely the game simply hasn’t hit Kwalee’s internal performance targets. Sales figures haven’t been shared, though, and it did also launch straight into Game Pass via Xbox, Cloud, and PC. UK-based publisher Kwalee is still heavily featuring Luna Abyss on its website at the time of writing, by the way.
Luna Abyss follows Fawkes, “a prisoner of Luna caught between a cryptic prophecy and their prison sentence”, in a single-player, first-person action-adventure with substantial platforming sections and dazzling bullet-hell battles. Having played through most of it, I’ve found it one of 2026’s most hard-hitting action romps so far, with inventive level design and Metroid Prime-inspired shooting impressing even before you get to the horror-inspired art direction. I think there’s something there for those who believe Saros would’ve been better as an action game without roguelite elements.