Oddworld
Oddworld is the setting of a series of video games originally for the PlayStation and more recently, for the Xbox.
The series is developed by Oddworld Inhabitants of San Luis Obispo, California. The company was founded in 1994 by Lorne Lanning and Sherry McKenna, and has so far been responsible for three titles, all set in the same universe:
- Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee (2-D graphics)
- Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus (2-D graphics)
- Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee (3-D graphics, based on Maya)
The developers have stated that the Oddworld series will be a quintet, and that Abe's Exoddus was not part of that group. The next game, to be published in 2005 by Electronic Arts, is tentatively known as Oddworld: Stranger, and is also a non-quintet title.
The world
Oddworld contains two main races. The Glukkons are tall beings with no arms, and the Mudokons are shorter green beings with large hands and feet. The Glukkons are few in numbers and own everything, the Mudokons are very high in numbers and are used as slave labour. Oddworld contains many other creatures and beings, including the sligs (gun toting beings used as security but reliant on technology as they are born legless), the vykkers (ruthless scientists with many arms), and the paramites and scrabs (animals once considered sacred but now used for cheap meat to the brink of extinction).
Locations on Oddworld include Rupture Farms, a factory that produces various food products (among them Paramite Pies and Scrab Cakes), Necrum Mines (a ancestral Mudokon burial ground, taken over by the Glukkons), Soulstorm Brewery (which uses Mudokon bones and tears to produce the drink Soulstorm Brew), and Vykkers Labs (a scientific research facility operated by Vykkers and owned by Glukkons). Most of these locations only appear in one game, as one goal of the games is often to destroy the location you begin at.