Remember Absolver, the martial arts multiplayer title from developer Sloclap and publisher Devolver Digital? There hasn’t been much news out of the game beyond a production update post in May 2018, the Downfall expansion release in September 2018, and more recently a balance patch in March 2019.
So just where do things stand? In terms of player numbers, the game experienced a couple of peaks in April and November 2020, both of which fell away shortly after, but beyond that the player headcount appears to have hit something of a plateau, with numbers running between 120 – 140 players in total over the course of last year, though there are a couple of dips below the mark. As of this writing, the game’s last 30 days saw 146 players at peak while the last 24-hour peak was 78 players.
That all sounds rather dire on paper, but recent Steam user reviews trend to the “Very Positive” scale, and there has been some recent activity on the game’s Steam forums, with a player-arranged 3v3 EU tourney and one response to a call for players for an encounter pointing towards an active Discord community.
There’s also a thread where players try to ascertain why Absolver didn’t light a lot of people on fire, but one of the best pieces of evidence that the title has a small but dedicated community comes from another thread asking if the game is dead, which prompted a pretty succinct player response: “Buy and play it. But Absolver will no longer be updated. Just enjoy what you have. This is a masterpiece.”
