Well, better late than never. After 10 months and a completely scrapped entry later, we’re back! This time diving into probably one of the most impactful games of my childhood purely in terms of art design and graphical prowess. One that made such an impression on me that has lasted for decades now, that game, is Oddworld Abe’s Exoddus.

Hello

Now, for the knowers out there, yes, this is the sequel to Abe’s Oddysee. I didn’t get to experience, let alone know about it’s existence, until a few years after i’d dug into Exoddus.

I had the ripped PC version of it since it was nearly impossible to get a big box copy where i live so you had to get what you could get at the time and my grandpa got this one randomly I guess when I was a kid and just threw it in with the other stuff he’d get for me every now and then. So it being ripped back in those days meant ZERO cutscenes. Zero context on the story, just drop in at the Necrum Mines, “hello”, the smooth drum beat of the 1st level OST plays, and here I am playing Oddworld as a youngin.

Details of my first encounter are fuzzy, seeing as we’re vastly approaching 30 GOT DAMN years later, so forgive my scatterbrained recollection of events and subsequent rambling. What i vividly remember though, was how different in approach this was to, say, Mario and Sonic. In that the pace was slow and deliberate, and combat was non-existent for my man Abe here. So i had to adapt, learn how to platform, how to speak to the other Mudokons and get them to safety and avoid the various dangers that include the lumbering Sligs, their dangerous but derpy Slogs, and the other more primal beasts you encounter later in the game.

And doing so as a child? FUCKIN’ ROUGH.

Doing this on a KB as a kid builds character.

But despite difficulty spikes every single level, what kept me going?

I mean….

LOOK at it.

Disclaimer: Using assets from the HD Exoddus project which uses a mix of handmade and AI upscaling.

Follow Me.

Each screen, each panel, each slide, whatever you wanna call them, drew me in like a kid to candy, man. Stunning, timeless visual design that draws me in every time I boot it up to this day. This showed me how beautiful games could be artistically. Sure, I also had many pre rendered classics around that had their own incredible aesthetic like DK Country 2 and Grim Fandango(stay tuned). But Abe’s had such a unique otherworldly vibe that I still feel hasn’t been matched since, even by Oddworld Inhabitants themselves.

Since I did have the rip of the game, and no cutscenes to let me know what was happening, I purely used that very artwork to tell the story for me, ‘ye olde environmental storytelling if you will, and the many scattered info terminals. I saw the Mudokon slavery, the industrial takeover by the Sligs and how brutal and unnatural they were, the sick Mudokons from this “Soulstorm Brew”, the destruction of the mine, the slow build up of power Abe gets and…that’s as far as i got as a kid.

Never got to the halfway point, because of THIS screen, in the Mudanchee Vault.

Now, you’d think, “hey just jump in the hole”, NOPE. Just shoots you up to that ledge, then what?

I got stuck, HERE. For YEARS. Didn’t know what to do, the well didn’t take me UP as the arrow inclined. Nah, nothin’.

We didn’t have Youtube, hell we barely had internet.

For YEARS, I spent watching the demo clips on the main menu of levels i’d never see, never got to play.

Eventually I found the Oddworld website, and discovered that they have the missing cutscenes I never knew existed…but DSL internet ain’t loading those anytime soon. But hey, i got to see the opening cutscene VERY SLOWLY.

Years, and many playthroughs of this game up to that point later….

I can’t specifically remember how, but i finally figure it out, on a random playthough…

That was it.

Wow.

So as it turns out, the clue is the falling rocks from the top of the screen indicating you can hoist up there.

With this new information gained, the work began.

Work.

So after my youthful ignorance got the best of me, I finally bested the dreaded Mudanchee vault screen and I continued my journey through to the finish. Finally getting to experience the rest of Exoddus. Through the rest of the Scrab infested Mudanchee vault, to finally getting to gain the power to cure my friends from sickness(among other things). Finally getting to journey to the heart of the world in FeeCo. Depot, my personal favorite spot in the entire game. Not sure the name of the art style(Art Deco?) but i adore the architecture and vibe of the station.

It was here that my love of the game became eternal. There were a couple demo clips in the main menu that had brief glimpses of the station and it took SO long to finally arrive here. Took it in slowly.

But, I can’t stay here, more work to do.

You venture to the Main Lobby that the Slig Barracks and Boneworks reside as well as the executive offices and later the Soulstorm Brewery. But there was a greyed out area known as Rupturefarms.

Remember that block of time I was stuck? Yeah I got to play Oddysee in that time on PS1. Got my ass KICKED. The first game was no joke, especially trying to learn it on controller and ZERO Quiksaves? Dude.

So finally getting to see a reference to Oddysee in Exoddus was awesome. But for now it’s time for Boneworks and Slig Barracks. This part of the game is where the difficulty ramps up quite a bit. The Barracks is an industrial area filled with greens and browns and greys littered with background sligs waiting to take pot shots at the lone moving target(you) trying to get through the hellish training and living space for the Sligs. Boneworks on the other hand is more of a rustic, brick-laden, vast space with a ton of sprawling structures and piles and piles of what i’d later find out to be, the ground up bones of the very Mudokon’s you’re trying to save. My least favorite area. But at the end of these areas you get to do something i’d also been waiting quite some time to do, play as the corporate overlords, the Glukkons.

See, in Oddworld, Abe has the unique ability to possess the very enemies that populate the game, that is unless there are the Security Orbs that deny you that luxury. And up to this point in the game only the Sligs, the Paramites, and the Scrabs were possessable. With each having their own unique ways of traversing and communicating as well as different means of combat. Well, the Glukkons have no arms, and can barely walk and have to hop to even get somewhere fast. So they have to purely talk to get things done, and this is where the game’s “Gamespeak” is used at it’s maximum. You have to command Sligs to move, shoot, use levers and control elevators. These parts SUCKED to learn because one little mistake, back to the start of the section. Because in Boneworks once you control the Glukkon that runs the area, all hell breaks loose and alarm bells ring, since you need to use them to shut the area down and do it FAST. But once i got to grips with it, subsequent playthroughs were much easier. And finally controlling Glukkons was so much damn fun. Especially in the executive office that unlocks once you shut the Barracks and Boneworks down.

When you eventually use the offices to unlock the Soulstorm Brewery, the endgame begins.

And buddy, my kid self was TESTED.

Wait.

Completely uncharted territory, just the snippets from the demo reels of course, but this was the deep end.

Filled wall to wall with the barrels of brew made from every bit and piece of your fellow Mudokons, which kinda makes you think just how many of your friends did they get? Well I still didn’t have cutscenes yet so I had NO idea what was up, only the bits an bobs from the terminals scattered throughout the game.

Truly putting everything you learned to the test. I gotta go through THREE “Zulag” level trees with up to 5 levels each and a final level being a massive platforming gauntlet with a timer that sees you using your gained power to overload and set off an explosion to the brewery and finally stop the Cartel’s production. And buddy, let me tell you, the amount of times I died on this section, hell, just the final level ALONE probably tops the rest of the game COMBINED.

But, when it’s all said and done. The brewery goes boom, and whomever you got to save got rescued and I’m greeted with a credits screen basically saying, “Good job, but you didn’t save all 300.”

What was that? THREE HUNDRED?

Yeah.

NOW the grind begins.

All ‘Ya!

Not 5 seconds in, there’s a secret on this very screen. Guess where?

Three Hundred Mudokons, Zero Casualties.

Have only done it twice, but it took a long time and many actual bought copies of the game later. (YAY CUTSCENES)

Funnily enough I never got to experience the full story UNTIL doing the 300 runs and this was much later into my teens/20s. But finally seeing all the connective tissue of the game not to mention getting to experience the transition cutscenes between certain levels was such a treat. Like getting a whole new game a decade or so later.

Tackling the 300 run meant learning where the hell everybody is. Before, I had stumbled upon hidden areas throughout the game where you get whisked away to a random part of Slig Barracks, Boneworks or the Brewery and have to complete a short challenge to rescue the Mudokons. Some of these were straight-forward while others are brutally tough and if you don’t save often, you’re going way back. Remember, no casualties. So the one’s I couldn’t find, I had to use a trusty old site, GameFAQs, and use their written guides. Shout out to those guys. And the common theme around the secrets? The brew bottles and falling rocks. See, what my young dumb self never realized, those falling rocks that got me unstuck also were the key to finding secrets. And sprinkled in each area are piles of Soulstorm Brew bottles that, thanks to my new found context, were left by the very Mudokons I was saving and they left a trail for me to find them.

So away I went. And after a dozen hours of grinding, Quiksaving and Quikloading….

So what do you get for all the hard work? Well…a teaser for a game that had been out already and don’t get me started on THAT one. (YEARS of pain and xbox exclusivity, only for it to finally be out on PC years after i’d given up on ever playing it and was disappointed when i finally got to play it. Shit. I guess i got started.)

Well at least the journey was well worth it, and a journey i’d do again for the hell of it. Because I adore this game. The art, the characters, the music, the gameplay, the everything. One of the few platformers i’d call perfect. The others I may very well write about later, but this one was special, this one I had a multi-year journey with, ever since I was young. One that I feel rarely ever gets brought up or few even know about. Like I know it was pretty big in it’s day but man, nobody I knew played it.

As for the current day iteration, well, New And Tasty was Oddysee’s full 3D remake and that was my only completion of that game(rescued em all BTW) and I quite enjoyed that. Loved seeing the 3D interpretation of Oddysee’s own unique and incredible artwork.

But we never really got Exoddus.

No, we got Soulstorm. And while I loved the cutscenes and the in game artwork, and seeing some of what i’d hoped for. It just isn’t Exoddus. A reimagining isn’t the same as what the first game got. THAT’S what I wanted, not Soulstorm. But it’s really what the devs had originally planned for it to be, the full Exoddus story, it’s own thing. Not a scrapped together sequel done in less than a year. Maybe if the gameplay itself was better I might’ve given it more of a chance. But after YEARS of waiting for that and a ton of insanely high expectations. It was a massive letdown. But Exoddus is still there, and will always be there.

The HD fan remake is promising and seeing how well the original artwork is looking in its full non pixelated glory is incredible. Just wished we had the original renders instead of AI upscaled stuff, but considering it’s a niche within a niche, I’ll take it for now.

Goodbye.

If you made it this far, fuckin’ love you. Hopefully the next one won’t take *checks watch* TEN MONTHS.

But until then, thank you.

Games That Made Me #3 - Oddworld Abe’s Exoddus