The Abandoned Planet – Lost in a Galaxy Far, Far Away

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• DEVELOPER: Dexter Team Games
• PUBLISHER: Snapbreak
• PLATFORMS: PC, Android, Linux, macOS
• GENRE: Adventure / Point & Click
• RELEASE DATE: August 29, 2024
• INITIAL PRICE: 14.79€
• REVIEWED ON: PC

If stars, galaxies, and other aspects of space fascinate you, then The Abandoned Planet can pull you into a completely new world. And if you’re a fan of sci-fi stories, the technology and extraterrestrial discoveries in this game might pique your interest. Or maybe you simply enjoy puzzling over strange challenges—no worries, there are plenty of them on this mysterious planet. Whatever your reason, this short adventure game is worth trying, as it challenges you with mysteries worthy of a true space explorer.

Indiana Jones Meets Space Odyssey

The Abandoned Planet by Dexter Team Games is a 2D point & click adventure inspired by classics like Myst and Riven. You play as an astronaut who travels through a strange wormhole and lands on a distant planet. The place appears abandoned at first glance, but as the story develops, more and more traces of an ancient civilization emerge. Although no inhabitants are in sight, you can feel the presence of something lurking in the shadows, watching your every step.

The game successfully blends a sci-fi atmosphere with an adventurous narrative. It explores themes such as technology, artificial intelligence, and the possibility of alien life, connecting them across various parts of the planet. As you search the jungle, ancient city, and even entirely different islands, I often felt like a character straight out of an Indiana Jones film.

While collecting artifacts and using them to solve complex puzzles requires significant concentration, connecting all the dots in the end provides a strong sense of satisfaction. Taking on the role of an astronaut with detective-like skills allows players to expand the story in unexpected ways, ensuring that clicking your way through this adventure never gets dull.

Puzzles, Sound Effects, and Lots of Pixels

It’s no surprise that point & click games rely heavily on puzzles. However, I didn’t expect such variety, there are puzzles that require memory, linking, combining, matching, timing, and even scanning. Your fusion scanner turns out to be an essential tool throughout the entire playthrough, and forgetting to use it can lead to major setbacks. While the main character’s hints are sometimes quite clear, solving the puzzles is mostly up to the player. Trust me, it takes many attempts to finally get things right.

“I can’t use these things together,” “I have no reason to do that,” “I don’t think so”, these are phrases you’ll definitely hear often while playing. Later on, the difficulty only increases when you gain access to a notebook full of images and various instructions written in an alien language (yes, the developers actually created a completely new language for this game). In this case, slower progress is inevitable, but who doesn’t want to occasionally challenge themselves with something more ambitious?

The Abandoned Planet also shows the creators’ ambition to give the title a unique charm. They succeeded in doing so with two key elements. The first is a very thoughtful sound design. The main character’s voice sounds noticeably different underground, outdoors, or in a large room.

Button presses indicate correct patterns. Moving to a new location or checking your inventory is accompanied by distinctive audio cues. Not only does this add realism, but it also enhances the atmosphere by blending high-tech sounds into the game world. And if you’re a fan of funky retro music, you’ll certainly enjoy the short cutscenes that use various tunes.

Speaking of cutscenes, let’s talk about the second key ingredient, beautiful pixel art. To convey the style of an old-school adventure game, an HD interface is layered over hand-painted pixel-art backgrounds, capturing a futuristic 90s aesthetic. Every cutscene is fully animated in this style as well. What I found particularly interesting is that the graphics are even integrated into the gameplay, you need to look closely for clues that are easy to miss. At one point, you can even earn an achievement for finding a single dust speck made of one pixel. We’re talking precision!

Are We in a (Lunar) Eclipse?

While immersed in the puzzles or mesmerized by the environment, it’s very easy to lose sight of the main goal: getting home. Each task not only brings you closer to the end of the story but also reveals subtle clues about the abandoned planet itself. At first glance, the story might seem fairly simple, but only in the final minutes do we discover the full truth, a revelation not of one, not two, but at least three major surprises. The ending sheds light on the questions players have in mind throughout the game: Where are we? What is happening to this place? Why was it abandoned?

It’s also worth mentioning that finishing the game unlocks some interesting extras. There’s an art gallery with hand-drawn level designs and puzzles, as well as several digital artworks. You also gain access to the full game script, which helps you understand the story more clearly. And finally, you now have the chance to play Escape Mode! In this mode, players have 2 hours to complete the entire game before the planet explodes, a fun way to test your memory.

Final Thoughts

The Abandoned Planet offers a unique take on the point & click adventure genre—it gives you many puzzles and mysteries at once, encouraging you to uncover the truth step by step. It’s a short but intense experience that ultimately pays off. As for me, I genuinely enjoyed the modern and dynamic feel of the gameplay, especially the inventory-based and environmental puzzles.

Review copy provided by the publisher