Abandoned 12.8Mb
If you like games with lots of atmosphere, you’ll find Abandoned hard to beat. It has the most extraordinary and almost haunting, very beautiful music with ambient washes of synthesizer, noise and distant, percussive rumblings along with music box style tinkles. The music exudes creepiness, foreboding and a mysterious air, permeating through the whole tone of the game.
But it’s the game itself that will hold your attention as you try to solve some almost deviously difficult puzzles. It is an immersive and fascinating game with you against the clock, being a maze exploration game - with not many enemies, except the always ever-ticking clock. You start out with ten minutes worth of oxygen, during which time you have to find another oxygen cylinder and so on from then on. If you run out of oxygen it’s game over, so it’s worth saving the game and reloading if you get close to using up all of your oxygen.
You are thrust into the game as the result of a failed genetic experiment, with little idea of what is going on. From then on in you have to figure out the next move and find your way out of the abandoned laboratory you were created in.
“The game gives you a feeling of being abandoned and lost, not by having a lot of dead ends, but by having multiple ways to go at any time. You probably only need about a third of the items in the game to find your way out, however the game has two different endings, and for the real explorer, there is always the goal of collecting all of the items”
It isn’t an action puzzler and timing skills don’t really come into it. It’s a deep game figuring out how to solve numerous puzzles with minimal clues. It starts, appearing deceptively simple but gets amazingly (and sometimes dauntingly) complex later in the game. Initially it’s finding how to get between and find your way around various large rooms, and how to somehow reach that tantalizingly placed object you need. You might easily waste minutes at a time (and of your oxygen) just trying to figure out what to try or what to do next. You have to provide direction to your exploration. You have just hatched from an egg, and your character is half-bird, half-robot, with your mission being to escape the hazy murky maze you find yourself in. There are collectible items to find and skills to develop to help you along the way. And of course, you have to find that next oxygen cylinder every ten minutes . . .
If you haven’t the patience (or luck!) to find oxygen cylinders, there’s a cheat available in the Caiman download that gives you unlimited oxygen, though this takes a lot of the pressure off playing the game! If you’re a real game aficionado, or you’ve got some way through the game using the cheat, you might like to play/re-play it with the time limiting oxygen finding necessity enabled!
There is a map to find, which can help you (a little!) as you try to find your way out.
It’s the sort of game that can have you engrossed for hours at a time, though it can take a while to get into, initially. In spite of its difficulty, the game is an enthralling experience. Depth of play is its best overall attribute. The graphics are not over-detailed but this really suits the mysterious surroundings, while the music is amongst the very best you’ll find in any computer game. It has an unsettling and powerful atmosphere that will have you trying to find that next oxygen, while solving the next puzzle of many. You will probably need to use the save and reload feature time after time as you press on with the game. The intrigue and vast area to explore will keep you very well occupied, even if the puzzles have you scratching your head in frustration at times! Once you get into it, it might have you keep on playing until you give up, until the next time! It’s certainly a great game to keep coming back to!