Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty!

Few 1997 games still have a cult following, and few of those have earned it. Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee has. It was a PlayStation-era platformer about a factory worker who finds out he’s next on the menu. Its hero couldn’t fight, and it had more to say about labor, consumption and corporate indifference than most “serious” games released since. Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty! is its full remake. Just Add Water (Developments), Ltd. built it with the franchise’s original studio, Oddworld Inhabitants.

The setup is still one of gaming’s best elevator pitches. Abe waxes floors at RuptureFarms, the biggest meat-processing plant on Oddworld. He overhears the board’s plan for its next product, “New ‘n’ Tasty!”, which will be made from Abe and his fellow Mudokon workers. So he runs. The game’s moral question is whether he takes anyone with him.

It’s a remake, not a remaster, and the difference is real. The original’s pre-rendered, screen-by-screen backgrounds have been replaced by rebuilt 3D environments with dynamic lighting. The camera now scrolls smoothly instead of cutting from one fixed screen to the next. The audio was re-recorded. The Mudokon count has tripled from the original’s 99 to 299. Just Add Water also added the one feature that 1997 players would have traded a kidney for: quicksave.

The market position is clear. New ‘n’ Tasty! is a premium, puzzle-heavy, cinematic 2.5D platformer. It sits in the lineage that runs from Another World and Flashback through to Limbo and Inside. It’s more mechanically demanding than the moody minimalists that followed it, and much funnier. The audience response has been warm: the iOS version averages about 4.8 out of 5. The complaints are consistent and predictable: the difficulty is steep, the controls are finicky, and some checkpoints feel mean. They aren’t new problems. They come from the original’s design, and the remake only partly addresses them.

• Full 3D Rebuild of a 2D Classic: Every environment was rebuilt with depth, dynamic lighting and a scrolling camera. The level logic still matches the original’s screen-by-screen puzzle design.
• 299 Mudokons to Rescue: The rescue count is higher than the original’s, and it does more than tally rescues. It decides which of two endings you get and how the story remembers Abe.
• GameSpeak and Possession: Abe survives with his voice. He greets, commands and calms other Mudokons, and he can chant to possess armed Slig guards and turn their weapons on their comrades.
• Quicksave: Progress can be saved anywhere. That turns the original’s harshest trial-and-error stretches into puzzles that can be iterated on.
• Modern and Classic Control Schemes: Choose analog movement or the original grid-based, step-precise input.
• Local Co-op and Leaderboards: A second player can share the escape, and leaderboards give completionists something to chase after the credits.

The Gameplay Loop: Observe, Die, Understand, Execute

New ‘n’ Tasty! isn’t an action game. It’s a sequence of lethal logic puzzles dressed up as an action game. Abe has no attack. He can run, sneak, jump, pull levers, throw grenades and rocks, and talk. Every room is a small deterministic machine made of patrolling Sligs, sleeping Slogs, mines, trapdoors and meat saws. The job is to work out its timing.

The loop is simple and unforgiving. Go in, watch, and almost certainly die. Then understand the room and try again. When it works, a precise run past three guards with two Mudokons in tow is as satisfying as anything in the genre. When it doesn’t, it means repeating a long setup to retry a moment’s worth of progress.

Quicksave changes that. In the original, a mistake late in a long puzzle chain sent players back to a distant checkpoint, forcing a replay of everything already solved. In the remake, a section can be saved once solved, so only the troublesome part needs practice. Purists will call that softening. It reads as respect for the player’s time. The puzzle design is intact. The busywork between attempts is gone.

The fix isn’t complete, though. Automatic checkpoint placement is still uneven. Some sections checkpoint generously, while others drop players back past several screens of solved material if nothing was saved manually. The game expects a quicksave habit and never really teaches it, and much of the frustration around the game traces back to that untaught habit.

GameSpeak: Brilliant Idea, Clumsy Interface

GameSpeak is still the series’ boldest idea. Rescuing Mudokons isn’t a matter of touching them. It’s a conversation. Say “Hello,” then “Follow me,” then “Wait,” and lead a nervous line of workers past guards and into a bird portal. Some Mudokons are depressed, some are angry, and some have been drugged into giggling, so the language has social layers. It’s a conversation system as a puzzle mechanic, and in 1997 it was years ahead of its time.

The weakness is the input. The commands are mapped to shoulder buttons and modifiers, and under pressure it’s easy to issue the wrong one. A mistimed “Wait” instead of “Follow me” can get an entire escort killed. The remake lets players address groups of Mudokons at once, which makes the bigger rescues manageable. Commands still have no margin for error, though, and moving Mudokons around the space can feel fiddly. It’s the most common specific complaint, and it’s fair.

Possession: Power With a Price

Chanting to possess a Slig is the game’s power fantasy. The guard gets taken over, walked down the corridor and turned on his colleagues, then detonated when he’s no longer useful. It’s darkly funny. It also puts a verb into a game that otherwise has none. But chanting leaves Abe exposed, some zones block it, and possessed Sligs can’t do everything. The game hands out power only on its own terms, and that keeps possession from breaking the stealth design.

Moral Weight and the Two Endings

This is where New ‘n’ Tasty! differs from most platformers. The rescue count is the story. Save enough Mudokons and Abe becomes a liberator. Abandon them and the game remembers that too. It’s a binary ending system, and by current standards it can feel blunt. Still, it gives the collection mechanic a meaning that “collect every coin” never had. Leaving a worker behind because the escort was too hard feels bad, and it’s meant to.

Controls: Modern vs. Classic

The modern analog scheme makes Abe feel more like a contemporary platformer character, with fluid acceleration and freer movement. The classic scheme snaps him back to the original’s grid logic, with measured steps and exact jump distances. That debate still divides fans. Some prefer the original’s pacing and precision. For a first run, we’d recommend classic controls. The puzzles were designed around discrete movement, and analog input sometimes adds slop to jumps that demand exact placement. Offering both is the right call. Leaving the choice to the player without explaining the trade-off isn’t.

Co-op

The local co-op mode lets two players share the adventure by passing control back and forth. It’s a pleasant way to play with someone on the couch. It’s not a co-op game in the modern sense, and it shouldn’t factor into a purchase decision.

The art direction is where the remake justifies itself. RuptureFarms is now a dense industrial hellscape. Meat hooks swing through the foreground, distant slaughter lines move in the background, and warning lights flicker across rusted steel. Dynamic lighting does real work here. Shadows hide threats, and searchlights make spaces readable. The later wilderness areas, Paramonia and Scrabania, get the same treatment and look richer and more alive than the original’s backdrops ever could.

The animation upgrade matters more than it seems. Abe’s weight, his flinches and his chanting all read clearly at a glance, and in a game where timing is life or death, readable animation is a gameplay feature, not decoration. The re-recorded audio keeps the original’s comic performances, from the Sligs’ bored menace to the Mudokons’ dopey cheer, and gives them modern fidelity.

The 3D rebuild has one real cost. The original’s fixed screens made every hazard easy to see. The new scrolling camera occasionally frames a dangerous jump or a Slig’s patrol less clearly than the old compositions did. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it causes the kind of cheap death the game can’t afford.

The interface is minimal and mostly stays out of the way. The rescue tally is easy to find, and menus are functional without being memorable.

Steam (PC): The most comfortable version for most players. A gamepad is strongly recommended. Keyboard works, but GameSpeak and movement at the same time is awkward on keys. PC is also where the community guides that help with the tougher rescues are easiest to reach.

Nintendo Switch: A natural fit. Joy-Con and Pro Controller input suits the game’s precise movement, and a puzzle-heavy platformer with quicksave works well in short handheld sessions. A puzzle can be saved mid-way, the console put to sleep, and the run resumed later without losing anything.

iOS: The highly rated version, at around 4.8 out of 5, and it’s easy to see why. Having the full remake in a pocket is impressive. Still, the touch controls feel cramped. Virtual buttons for movement, jumping, sneaking and GameSpeak take up the screen, and mistapped commands are fatal in a game this precise. Pair a Bluetooth controller and it becomes a solid portable version.

Android: The same advice applies, and it’s more urgent here. Touch input has the same crowding problems, and phone hardware varies widely. A controller isn’t optional for anyone planning to finish the game.

Remakes usually fall into one of two traps. Some are so reverent that they preserve every flaw, and others are so eager to modernize that they lose what made the original special. New ‘n’ Tasty! mostly avoids both. Just Add Water kept the puzzle design, the moral stakes and the jet-black satire untouched. The changes that matter are to presentation and to respect for the player’s time. Quicksave, dual control schemes and a much richer world make a 1997 design playable for a modern audience without dulling its teeth.

It isn’t friction-free. GameSpeak still has too little tolerance for misinputs, the checkpoints still occasionally show the original’s cruelty, and the mobile ports need a controller to be more than a curiosity. This is a demanding game that expects patience, observation and a lot of deaths.

For players willing to meet it on those terms, it’s a smart, funny puzzle-platformer that earns its recommendation — and one of the few games that still makes rescuing a stranger feel like a choice that matters.