The Abandoned Planet

The Abandoned Planet is a first person point and click adventure game. You play as a space explorer that suffers ship troubles and crash land on an alien planet. With nothing else to do, you set off in the hopes of somehow finding a way back home. You discover that the planet was once inhabited, but no longer. There are remnants of an alien civilization, but now, it is all…

…abandoned.

Find it on Steam.

The game is drawn in a simple but effective pixel style. While things are presented in a first person viewpoint, you will always face the same direction, so no need to worry about turning around and examining behind objects. The game is mainly exploring the area, figuring out the puzzles, and then making it to the next area. The puzzles are pretty nice. They are varied and interesting.

The game starts off simple, getting you used to the world and some of the technology going on. Later areas are larger with more places to get lost in. The puzzles come in many varieties, some of the mini-game kind. Others are more integrated into the world. Some are simple to figure out while others feel mysterious and ominous. If you are thinking about it from a real-life perspective, you wonder why certain things were set up in that way. The answer is to make it a puzzle, of course!

I am curious about the design decision to make navigating the world done through four arrow buttons in the corner of the screen. In other games of this style, you click on the edge of the screen or some such to move around. In this game, you can also do that, but that part of the screen won’t show as interactable, and you can’t move backwards. Using the arrow buttons is the only way to do that.

There is voice acting in the game, though it feels kind of plain and lacking. And I think the voice actress pronounces the word obelisk differently each time it comes up in the script.

The atmosphere of the game is nice, though. It is just you, on an alien planet, full of things you can’t read. The puzzles are interesting, and the lonely trek through the world provides a somber mood. It has similar feelings to the Myst game series. The Abandoned Planet is a solid point and click game for you to explore and figure things out.

Find it on Steam.