L'Abbaye Des Morts (and Morts! and Morts!)

This one from Locomalito (developer of 8Bit Killer) has been written about all over the place, but I've just managed to give it more than a passing look. It's wonderful. In L'Abbaye des Morts you play Jean Raymond, a monk fleeing the Cathars into a strange abbey. The doors shut tight behind Jean and the game presents you with a maze of rooms spanning the bell tower down to the catacombs beneath the abbey.

The game is simple in it's construction and in its play. You can jump, walk, and crawl. There are crosses to collect and hearts to restore your nine lives, and levers to access new areas. The sprites are beautiful one-color creations, reminiscent of the Commodore 64 era (this from someone who was barely a pupae in those days of course), simply animated and wonderfully expressive.

What impresses me most about L'Abbaye is how dense the game is for having only a dozen or so rooms. There are platforming challenges everywhere, including the optional crosses, for a nice sort of choose-how-challenging system. I backtracked quite a lot trying to figure out what to do, or how to get some of the crosses, and the rooms even play differently when moving through them from one side or the other, because of the timing of the various enemies or other dangers.

On a personal level, L'Abbaye is the perfect size game for most of what I need. I don't have a lot of time for the screen any more, and here is a game designed for a single sitting play (there isn't even a save feature, which is aggravating), dense with content and challenge, yet only lasting thirty minutes or so.

One thing I noticed about the game is it's presentation on the screen. The game window is 640x480, but the game itself is smaller. There is unused black space that surrounds it top, sides, and bottom. It isolates the game from the window, from the rest of your computer screen, and it contains the action within an unseen boundary. It adds danger and isolation to a game that deals with both. Was it intentional, or was 640x480 the next largest standard size that could contain a 172x128 pixel game magnified three times? The latter seems most likely, but not all choices have to be intentional to be beautiful.

For PC only, and you can download it here.