Daydreams on the Moon

Image by kalhh from Pixabay

If Stray was the bittersweet aftermath of us humans being long-gone from the picture, this indie game titled Abi which I happened to come across in Google's Play Store is like a companion piece of the robots left behind in yet another setting in which humanity is just in the cusp of their downfall, and maybe the only option for their salvation is a new generation of tech?

Disclaimer: GIFs and screenshots were taken from my 3-hour gameplay to give you some snippets if this genre interests you. Abi is still wholly owned by its creative developers.

The game opens with our friendly robot protagonist named, Abi along with the gentle giant robot, DD, who is asking for help looking for their bird friend. And I don't know about you, but that desolate title page of everything just being sand isn't exactly the type of environment I'd imagine a tiny white bird (as described in the game) to live in, and that's not the only curious thing that came seconds into playing this game:

So we've got no humans in sight and all the other robots we've encountered point to this mysterious place called, Metropolis. What is there to find and personally, I don't think the city is the first place your lil bird friend will go to.

Abi: A Robot's Tale, for all its simplicity in being a point-and-click 2D game, makes one as a player surprisingly invested in its story-driven plotline and entertained me with its array of chronology-based puzzles, which also has the player need to shift between Abi or DD in order to get some sequences to work.

Along the way to Metropolis, Abi and DD meet a scientist named Jamie who claims he has a hand in building the mysterious city but was left behind by his fellow scientists, so despite being just a literal floating brain, he opts to tag along with our robot duo in order to "get his body back". (I accept that this is in the realms of sci-fi so I'll bite the shit Jamie's spewing out of his big brain)

And despite being starting out as a selfish brain ass just wanting to get to Metropolis stat, Jamie has his world flipped upside down with what our trio discovers in the supposed city of dreams:

I ain't spoiling any more than that screenshot but it's supposedly the very thing most of humanity is on the quest for, and I only question if our advancements in technology now will be sated anytime soon or will it cause more strife in our future? And sadly we have yet to come up with sentient robots such as DD who will be content to silently protect and our adorable lil Abi who always has DD's back, because no matter the advancements we may discover, being able to coordinate as a team is still essential in us moving forward.

And Jamie finally learns teamwork too!

So if you're ever interested in playing this, it's only available on mobile from what I know, but the price is hella cheap when I downloaded it-- like less than a dollar! And as for describing this as a companion piece to Stray-- not to compare their overall gameplay experience, but to somehow see a different side of the coin on why humanity went extinct and how our robot companions managed to live on seeing how sentient they are here. Granted, Jamie may be considered to be the last human in existence here, the ending still leaves more to be expanded upon and I'm keeping the game on my phone until the next DLC is added. (I mean, they've done it with the Metropolis Arc so... fingers crossed!)

GIF from tenor