Dotemu's roguelite beat 'em up Absolum is coming to phones. Publisher Playdigious, working with Dotemu and developers Guard Crush Games and Supamonks, has dated the mobile version for November 5 on iOS via the App Store and Android via Google Play - and this is a proper port with rebuilt controls, not a cloud stream or a stripped-down spin-off.
The hard part: putting a beat 'em up on a touchscreen
Beat 'em ups have a rough history on mobile, and the reason is not subtle. The genre runs on precise spacing, timed counters and knowing exactly which of your four buttons you just pressed - none of which survives being smeared across a piece of glass with no tactile feedback. Plenty of otherwise good ports have been sunk by a floating virtual stick that drifts under your thumb mid-combo.
Playdigious says the mobile build has been redesigned around phones and tablets specifically, with a new interface and full touch controls built for the format rather than transplanted from the console layout. That is the right claim to make, and it is one the studio has some standing to make: Playdigious is the outfit that got Dead Cells onto phones, a game with a similar dependence on frame-tight rolls and parries, and that port has now been running for seven years.
Controller support is also in, which is the safety valve. If the touch scheme does not click for you, a Bluetooth pad turns it back into the console game.
Cross-progression, with an asterisk
The save handling is the detail worth reading carefully. On Android, buying the game enables cross-progression between the mobile and PC versions as long as you are using the same Google Play Games account - so a run you started on your desktop can be picked up on your phone.
On both platforms, cloud saves let you share progress between your own devices. What is not on the table is iOS-to-PC cross-progression, which is a Google Play Games integration rather than something Playdigious is choosing to withhold. iPhone owners get cloud saves across their own Apple devices; they do not get to sync with a Steam library.
Achievements are wired into the native platform services on each side - Game Center on iOS, Google Play Games on Android.
What Absolum actually is
For anyone who missed it on console: Absolum is set in Talamh, a land where magic has been seized by the Sun King Azra following a magical cataclysm. You play as one of a group of outcast heroes joining the resistance, working through arcade-style melee combat built on counters, spendable magic and abilities you upgrade over the course of a run.
The roguelite structure is what separates it from the Streets of Rage lineage it otherwise draws on - branching quests, unlockable upgrades that persist between attempts, and enough route variation that repeated runs do not play out identically. Guard Crush Games handled the combat systems, having built Streets of Rage 4 before this, while the French animation studio Supamonks did the art and character design, which is why the whole thing looks like a Saturday morning cartoon with an unusually good budget.
A game with a track record behind it
Absolum originally launched on October 9, 2025 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam, with an Xbox Series X|S version following on March 25, 2026. It has since passed 500,000 units sold across all platforms - not a blockbuster number, but a genuinely strong one for a hand-animated beat 'em up from a mid-size French publisher, and enough to justify the port.
That history matters for a mobile release, because it means the version arriving on November 5 is a finished, patched, year-old game rather than a launch build. Whatever balance work and bug-fixing the console versions absorbed over the past eleven months comes with it.
Pricing has not been announced. Playdigious typically sells its mobile ports as premium one-time purchases rather than free-to-play conversions - Dead Cells being the obvious precedent - and there is nothing in the announcement to suggest a different approach here.
Absolum hits iOS and Android on November 5, 2026.
