Streets of Rage 4 Creators Reinvent the Beat‑’Em‑Up as a Roguelike — Meet Absolum (2025)
Absolum is a new 2D side-scrolling game from Dotemu and Guard Crush, with animation by Supamonks. It mixes classic beat-em-up action with roguelike systems, and is currently targeting a 2025 release on PC, PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch.
- Who makes it and when it’s planned: Dotemu, Guard Crush, Supamonks; targeting 2025 on PC, PS4, PS5, and Switch.
- What it is: a genre blend of beat‑em‑up and roguelike with runs, hub progression, and unlocks.
- Design notes and influences: built from Streets of Rage 4 experience, informed by Mr. X Nightmare, and inspired by games such as Dead Cells, Golden Axe, and Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara.
About Absolum
Absolum is described by its makers as a side-scrolling beat‑em‑up that adds roguelike structure. The teams behind Streets of Rage 4 — Dotemu and Guard Crush, with Supamonks handling animation — moved away from reviving an old franchise and instead built a new IP. Consequently, they aimed to expand the beat‑em‑up audience by incorporating rogue elements.
Lead game designer Gauthier Brunet said: “We had to create a new IP and we thought, how can we expand the beat-em-up [audience]?”
Brunet added: “Because we know how many players were interested in Streets of Rage 4. But we wanted to bring the mechanics we were proud of to more players. The solution we decided for this was to try and bring some rogue inside it.”
Design and influences
The team tested roguelike ideas earlier in Streets of Rage 4’s survival mode, which appeared in the Mr. X Nightmare DLC. That experimentation helped shape Absolum’s approach to runs, power-ups, and replay loop. Moreover, the developers cite inspiration from classic and modern titles: examples include Golden Axe and Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara for beat‑em‑up ideas, and Dead Cells for roguelike structure.
On genre overlap, Brunet said: “In some ways, a roguelike is very similar to Streets of Rage 4. You have a very natural link between an arcade game and a roguelike. The structure, how when you die you have to start again from the beginning, the length of the overall experience, all this kind of stuff,”
What to expect from the gameplay
Absolum features runs through multiple biomes where players clear combat screens and pick up power-ups. Death returns you to a hub, and the hub contains unlockable characters and passive abilities. Consequently, the game adds a buildcrafting layer on top of traditional beat‑em‑up skill-based play.
That mix required the team to rethink some systems. For example, when the developers added mounts they considered how a mount would interact with build choices rather than just being another attack. Brunet explained that making progression feel fluid took many iterations: “It was natural at first, but when we had to go in-depth and create specific mechanics, we understood that we had a lot to learn contrary to the beat-em-up.”
He also noted: “For a roguelike, we knew the genre and had played all the games, but when we’re working and saying ‘how can we make the progression very fluid?’ We had to iterate a lot. It was a real change for us.”
Finally, the team emphasized the importance of meaningful choices during runs: “You must have this moment where you choose an upgrade wisely because it might make or break the run.” Players can expect synergies and potential game‑breaking builds as part of that design goal.
