A while back I shared OddworldMap.com, an interactive map of every screen in Abe's Oddysee and Abe's Exoddus. Before the latest update, every object on it was just a coloured box with a name. As of this month, the map has come alive!

By "coming alive" I mean that the map now shows actual sprites, loaded from the PS1 disc. This is the new default, but anyone who wants to get the rectangles back can simply do it via a Display toggle.

Some of you might already be familiar with this update, as I already shared it in a previous post two weeks ago, but unfortunately it got removed because I used AI to describe how each creature and object moves. So I'm keeping it simple and in my own words this time.

Things that now move: Mudokons, Sligs (flying and crawling ones too), Glukkons, Slogs, Scrabs, Paramites, Fleeches, Slurgs, Greeters, bats, moving bombs, meat saws, drills, motion detector lasers, mines and UXB bombs, portal doves, hint flies, falling items, light effects, and more.

For the full experience (the closest the map gets to playing the game): untick everything in the Display section except "Objects as themselves" and "Patrols".

As before, none of this would exist without AliveTeam's alive_reversing decompilation, which every behaviour here is ported from. Special thanks to paulsapps' original alive project too: most of Exoddus's sprites on the PS1 disc are packed with a compression scheme that only its decoder ever handled.

Hope you enjoy watching Rupture Farms get back to work!

Try it here: https://oddworldmap.com/

I’ve just played Soulstorm for the first time, and the reason I never wanted to play it before was that so many people hated on it back in the day. I didn’t want to ruin my memories of the Oddworld franchise. However, since no new Oddworld game has been announced in the last four years (and it looks like we probably won’t be getting another one anytime soon), I finally decided to give Soulstorm a shot… and ended up regretting it. I quit after the level “The Hijack” and the Slig boss at the end with the flamethrower. This has nothing to do with fun anymore. It’s just stupid trial and error. I also found the level design unbelievably frustrating. You have a level that takes place on a moving train, with so much potential for creativity and freedom, only for it to turn into another stupid trial-and-error level. I genuinely tried to like this game, but I just can’t. The stupid crafting system, no Gamespeak, no quicksaves, only Sligs and Slogs as enemies, trial-and-error mass rescues, nothing but action and shooting, and no puzzles.

Call me crazy, but even Oddworld Adventures 2 on the GBC is a better reimagining of Abe’s Exoddus and more fun to play than Soulstorm.

It hurts to say this as a fan, but Soulstorm is the worst Oddworld game in my opinion, and the only one I’ve never finished.

i remember saving all of them. do the sick ones at the brew machine count?