*** Abandoned ***

Abandoned is a MetroidVania like game where you play as some weird thing that hatches out of an egg and flies around a maze like map before it dies from lack of oxygen. As you explore the dark and creepy landscape you unlock a variety of powers that you can use to break differently colored blocks. As far as I've played the game features no combat and no failure state aside from the timer running out. You can extend the time by picking up O2 tanks. The game can be saved by pressing X at save blocks, but only one save file can exist at a time. The game starts with a save file already loaded in that has everything unlocked, but this will be deleted the first time you save your game. The game also features a very nice creepy soundtrack with tracks for each different environment type, all of which are stored in MP3 format. One thing I learned about the soundtrack is that tracks do not loop if you stay in one area to the completion of a song, although fortunately I don't think that will ever happen to someone in game and the track restarts as soon as you enter the next room.

My opinion: Abandoned is a real honest to goodness videogame, and it's pretty decent. My biggest complaint would be the timer, although I think it's one of the better timers I've encountered in a game since it gives a sense of urgency while still being fairly forgiving with the O2 tanks. I only have 2 other problems with the game, the first being that the map is an upgrade and the second being that it can be hard to know exactly where you're supposed to be headed at any time, since you're never really given any goal. These are both problematic since as a MetroidVania game you're backtracking a lot, but neither of them were really all that bad since I only got lost a few times and never for very long.

Abandoned is an actual game and probably a good way to kill an hour or two if you're bored. The soundtrack isn't bad either.

Abandoned was made by JaJ (Joep Aben) and the soundtrack is by Rachael Please. You can download it here.