In Abandoned, the number two game from Ludum Dare 22’s top fifty submissions, you come to your senses aboard a space station bereaved of life and social activity and realize you are nothing more than a clone. We are spoon-fed this realization with no further fluffing. A grapple beam is attached to your arm, and with it you can spin a room around, tilting it this way and that. Your goal is to reach the room’s exit via a door, and not to die. Death is given out graciously by static laser beams. Completing each room gets you one step closer to unraveling a number of questions about who you are and what went wrong, though it is a painstakingly slow reveal.
I played for about ten minutes before giving up on a room I just couldn’t solve and hated redoing over and over. My bad, I guess, but I wasn’t really hooked (pun intended) on the whole experience.
While Abandoned does not do much with the chosen theme of this Ludum Dare–which is alone–it does look nice and play well. I mean, the room-moving grapple beam totally works and is a fun idea to build a game around, but I think the lack of a story and even slower reveal of it is a letdown. Would have liked to see this lower on the list, with maybe Stray Whisker or Last Breath in this spot. Onwards to the number one entry, a game called Frostbite that looks pretty dang good from an initial glimpse.
Grinding Down 