Solo Dev. Two Kids. One Wacom Tablet. The Making of The Abandoned Planet
Between wrangling a full-time job and parenting two young kids (including one born smack in the middle of development), I built The Abandoned Planet from a tiny corner of a Florida bedroom that doubles as office, nursery, and general chaos zone. Picture a Moleskine notebook taking up the last bit of empty space on a small desk, each page scribbled with little hand-drawn rooms and arrows mapping every corridor, while my toddler occasionally “helped” by crawling over my laptop. What I optimistically pegged as a one-year passion project stretched into two and a half years of solo dev hustle—coding, drawing, animating, composing the soundtrack, and even conjuring a semi-functional base-7 number system and a bespoke alien alphabet to pepper through the in-game journal and subtitles.
Every pixel in The Abandoned Planet was drawn on my Wacom tablet. I poured over the detailed pixel-art, the frame-by-frame animation, and the eerie soundscape. Movement feels delightfully retro—four-way D-Pad navigation—yet polished with a certain snappiness and dynamic touch. As you progress through this alien world, you decipher cryptic glyphs and pick up bizarre objects. It’s 90s-style adventure nostalgia, reimagined for the modern gamer.
- Modern Yet Retro: Immerse yourself in gorgeous pixel art enhanced by a sleek, high-definition UI.
- Quick Gameplay: A responsive navigation system which gives a nimble feel to the gameplay.
- Classic Point & Click Adventure: Leverage your items and the environment to awaken ancient totems, power up forgotten devices, and journey boldly into dangerous territories.
- An Expansive World: Five Acts with over 300 unique areas to explore.
- Haunting Animated Cutscenes: Dynamic, yet brief, cutscenes intersperse the gameplay, enriching the narrative.
- Fully Voiced: Enjoy the game in 11 world languages, complemented by complete voiceovers in English…and a unique alien language!
While The Abandoned Planet is a standalone game, it fits into a greater saga following Dexter Stardust: Adventures in Outer Space and hinting at more spacey escapades to come. Every puzzle twist and every scrawled alien symbol traces back to my crowded bedroom-nursery office, which kept development delightfully unpredictable. If you’re craving an adventure that’s as much about exploring a lost civilization as it is celebrating the odd joys of solo game creation, splash down on The Abandoned Planet for your next weekend escape.
The Abandoned Planet
Snapbreak Games