Okay, so picture this. I’m juggling a full-time gig and chasing after two little humans, one of whom, by the way, decided to make their grand entrance right in the thick of things. Where, you ask, did I hatch this whole “The Abandoned Planet” thing? Oh, just a cozy corner of my Florida bedroom that’s doing triple duty: office, nursery, and chaos central. Imagine a tiny desk piled with a Moleskine notebook filled with doodles of rooms and halls, arrows zigzagging like a toddler’s path (because, yeah, my kiddo sometimes crawls over my laptop like they’re helping—that’s up for debate).
What started as a neat little one-year hobby spiraled into a two-and-a-half-year solo odyssey. Seriously, I was in over my head with coding, sketching, animating, and even cooking up a janky base-7 number system and an alien alphabet for giggles—or maybe just subtitles.
Moving on…all the art, each pixel of it, sprung from my trusty Wacom tablet. Details engulfed me—frame-by-frame animation, pixel art so meticulous it’s almost obsessive. And the soundscape? Perfectly eerie. The whole thing has this retro vibe, thanks to four-way D-Pad controls that feel—how do I put it? Snappy, snazzy, something like that. Progress further and you’re knee-deep in cryptic symbols and weird knick-knacks. Think quirky adventure from the 90s, but, you know, updated for today’s tech.
Now, curveball—there’s sleeker pixel art jazzed up with a spiffy HD user interface. Quick gameplay? Yeah, it’s like the controls are on caffeine. And you’ve got your classic point-and-click vibe going on, which means tinkering with items and places to do things like waking up old totems. Or maybe it powers up something mysterious. There are five acts, over 300 areas to explore. Bam!
Cutscenes pop in the mix, dynamic yet blink-and-miss kind of short. All dialogue’s got full voiceovers in English, and to spice things up, there’s even a unique alien language in the mix.
And while The Abandoned Planet stands alone, it’s a piece of this whole shebang involving Dexter Stardust and hints at more spacey stuff on the way. Every puzzle, every cryptic drawing somehow circles back to my cluttered sanctuary of an office. If you’re eyeing an adventure dripping in lost civilization lore and the quirky joys of DIY game dev, take a dive into The Abandoned Planet. Perfect for a weekend, no less.
This game’s like Myst and Riven’s quirky cousin, sprinkled with 90s LucasArt vibes. You know what I mean? And if pixel art’s your thing and you’ve got a wanderlust itch, this one here is the ticket. It’s got voiceovers, a crazy number of scenes, and comes in a bunch of languages: English, Spanish, Italian, you name it.
Anyway, whether you’re into solving mysteries or just fancy ogling some chunky pixel art, this is where it’s at. Go on, give it a whirl.
