PLAY L'ABBAYE DES MORTS FREE
Locomalito's freeware classic — a hunted 13th-century priest explores a cursed abbey of 23 deadly rooms — ported to the Mega Drive. Plays instantly in your browser — keyboard, gamepad and touch all work, save states included. No download, no install, no quarters.
▶ PLAY NOW — IN YOUR BROWSER +25 XPMACHINE NOTE — A tiny priest, an abbey full of the dead, zero mercy. Locomalito gives his games away like a monk distributing alms, and this one fits the Mega Drive like a habit.
CARTRIDGE: L'Abbaye des Morts — Locomalito & Gryzor87, MD port by moon-watcher (2018). FREE HOMEBREW, LEGALLY DISTRIBUTED WITH FULL CREDIT — SEE ATTRIBUTION. EMULATION VIA EMULATORJS (RETROARCH SEGA GENESIS CORE, WEBASSEMBLY). PART OF THE CABINET — 58 FREE RETRO GAMES AT STARESBACK.GG.
FROM THE BLOG: ARE EMULATORS LEGAL? THE HONEST GUIDE · WHAT IS HOMEBREW? · HOW BROWSER EMULATION WORKS
THE MACHINE’S VERDICT
A tiny priest, a cursed abbey, zero mercy — Locomalito's freeware classic fits the Mega Drive like a habit.
L'Abbaye des Morts is a Mega Drive port (by moon-watcher) of Locomalito and Gryzor87's beloved freeware platformer, in which a hunted 13th-century priest picks his way through a cursed abbey of 23 deadly rooms. The original is a small masterpiece of ZX-Spectrum-flavored design — stark, unforgiving, and atmospheric — and the source pedigree is impeccable. Locomalito gives his games away on principle, and this one wears the Genesis well.
The honest caveat is that it's a port, not a ground-up Mega Drive original, so you're getting a faithful translation rather than reinvention. And it is hard, in the deliberate single-screen-death tradition; mercy is not on the menu. But the design is timeless and the price is zero. If you like tense, screen-by-screen platformers with mood to spare, this is one of the strongest things on the shelf.
Reviewed by The Machine · edited by Sam P. · scored 9/10
THE STORY BEHIND THIS CARTRIDGE
L'Abbaye des Morts is a platformer game built by Locomalito & Gryzor87, MD port by moon-watcher and released in 2018 under a free license — meaning the developer chose to make it free and redistributable, which is the only reason it can live on this shelf. Locomalito's freeware classic — a hunted 13th-century priest explores a cursed abbey of 23 deadly rooms — ported to the Mega Drive. A tiny priest, an abbey full of the dead, zero mercy. Locomalito gives his games away like a monk distributing alms, and this one fits the Mega Drive like a habit. It is native Sega Genesis / Mega Drive code — a smaller scene than Nintendo's, but home to some of homebrew's most ambitious technical work, much of it built with the open-source SGDK toolkit. Like every cartridge in THE CABINET, its license and author credit are recorded in our attribution file, and it boots straight in your browser with save states, gamepad and touch support.
HOW TO PLAY — CONTROLS
ARROW KEYS — D-pad · Z / X — action buttons · ENTER — start · SHIFT — select · gamepads are auto-detected the moment you press a button · on phones and tablets, touch controls appear automatically. Every binding is remappable from the emulator's settings menu, and save states live under the menu's save icon — stored in your browser, surviving page reloads.
COMMON QUESTIONS, UNCOMMON HONESTY
- Am I allowed to play L'Abbaye des Morts in the browser like this?
- Yes — and so are we. The author published L'Abbaye des Morts under a license that allows free redistribution, which is the standard this whole site is built on. Credit and license live in the attribution file.
- Will it run on a phone or tablet?
- Yes. The Sega Genesis core runs in any modern browser; touch controls appear on mobile and gamepads are detected the moment you press a button.
- How do I keep my progress?
- Save states, from the emulator's menu — saved locally in your browser, restored whenever you come back.
