Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty

Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty is a ground-up reconstruction of the 1997 cult classic Abe's Oddysee, rebuilt by Just Add Water Developments with modern visuals while keeping the original's strange, oppressive soul intact. You play Abe, a Mudokon slave and floor-scrubber at RuptureFarms, the galaxy's most productive (and most horrifying) meat-processing facility. One night he overhears a boardroom meeting and learns that his entire species is next on the menu. What follows is an escape, and eventually something closer to a reckoning. This is a cinematic puzzle-platformer that moves deliberately. Abe cannot fight. His tools are timing, patience, and a telepathic ability called GameSpeak that lets him issue commands to fellow Mudokons scattered across each level. Pull a lever at the wrong moment, mistime a roll through a spinning blade, or fail to warn a sleeping Mudokon before a Slig patrol turns the corner, and you are watching a brief, brutal death animation. The game checkpoints reasonably, but it never pretends the world is safe. That tension is the point. Every Mudokon you lead to a portal feels earned because the route to that portal genuinely tried to kill both of you. The rebuild treats the original geometry respectfully. Levels flow as continuous scrolling environments rather than the screen-by-screen structure of the 1997 release, which smooths the pacing and makes the factory feel like a real, breathing place. The backgrounds are gorgeous in a grimy, industrial way, layered with fog and rusted pipework and the distant sound of machinery that never quite stops. The audio design deserves special mention: RuptureFarms has a constant low hum that sits under every footstep, and the contrast when you reach outdoor sequences, open sky and birdsong and wind, hits harder because of it. Where the game stumbles slightly is in precision. Some jump arcs and ledge grabs feel a hair looser than the puzzle design demands, and a handful of timing-based sections will produce deaths that feel more random than instructive. Players coming in cold with no nostalgia for the original may also find the opening hour slow to reveal its mechanical depth. Stick past that. The mid-game, where the Mudokon rescue objectives stack up and routes branch, is where New 'n' Tasty finds its rhythm and earns its reputation. The writing is sharp in a quiet, understated way, delivered mostly through environmental storytelling and Abe's own mumbled commentary, and the ending lands with genuine weight. This is a game for people who like their platformers to ask something of them beyond reflex. It rewards observation, patience, and a willingness to retry. If you grew up with Abe, you already know whether you are buying this. If you did not, think of it as a handcrafted oddity with a factory-floor heart and a liberation story nobody in the industry would greenlight today.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

Be the first to comment on Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty.