Another World,a known as Out of This World in North America, is a 1991 cinematic platformer action-adventure game designed by Éric Chahi and published by Delphine Software. The game tells a story of Lester, a young scientist who, as a result of an experiment gone wrong, finds himself on a dangerous alien world where he is forced to fight for his survival.
Another World was developed by Chahi alone over a period of about two years, with only help with the soundtrack from Jean-François Freitas. Chahi developed his own game engine, completing all the game's art and animations in vector form to reduce memory use, with some use of rotoscoping to help plan out character movements. Both narratively and gameplay-wise, he wanted the game to be told with little to no language or user-interface elements. The game was originally developed for the Amiga and Atari ST but has since been widely ported to other contemporary systems, including home and portable consoles and mobile devices. Chahi has since overseen release of various anniversary releases of the game.
Another World was innovative in its use of cinematic effects in both real-time and cutscenes, which earned the game praise among critics and commercial success. It also influenced a number of other video games and designers, inspiring such titles as Ico, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, and even Delphine's later Flashback.
Gameplay
Another World is a platform game, featuring a control scheme where the player uses either the keyboard, joystick or gamepad to make the protagonist run, jump, attack and perform other, situation-specific actions, such as rocking a cage back and forth. In the initial part of the game, the player's character Lester is unarmed. He is able to kick at small creatures, but is otherwise defenseless.
Later in the game, the player acquires a laser pistol from a fallen foe. The pistol has three capabilities: a standard fire mode, the ability to create force fields to block enemy fire, and a powerful charged shot that can break through force fields and some walls. Enemies also have the same capabilities, requiring the player to take advantage of the three gun modes and the environment to overcome them.
Lester and his alien ally cannot sustain any damage, and the game ends immediately if either of them is struck by a projectile or comes in contact with an animal or an environmental hazard. However, the game uses numerous checkpoints enabling the player to keep restarting at the last point indefinitely. On the Amiga and older consoles without the ability to save a game, the player can write down an alphanumeric code for these checkpoints and re-enter it when restarting the game later. In any given scene, the game provides no clues as to what the player should do next, features no HUD except for an oxygen bar during the swimming sequences, and no on-screen text; and the characters the player meets speak in an unintelligible alien language.
Plot
The protagonist of the game is Lester Knight Chaykin, a young genius physicist. In the opening cinematic, Lester arrives at his high-tech underground laboratory in his Ferrari 288 GTO during a thunderstorm and goes to work on his experiment using a particle accelerator, attempting to reconstruct what happened when the universe was born. Immediately before the particles reach their intended destination, a lightning bolt strikes the laboratory and interferes with the accelerator, causing an unforeseen particle fusion and an explosion, opening a hole in time and space and teleporting Lester to a barren, alien planet.
After evading a number of dangerous indigenous animals, Lester is captured by a race of humanoid aliens and taken to a subterranean prison camp. Lester escapes along with an alien captive known as "Buddy" and the two of them must evade capture while travelling through a series of dangerous environments, battling alien soldiers and wild creatures while solving numerous puzzles in order to survive. The duo traverse the prison complex, a cave system and a tower structure. In the game's climax, Lester is severely wounded by one of the aliens, but with the help of his alien friend, manages to kill his attacker and escape. After reaching the top of the tower, Lester collapses, but is promptly joined by Buddy, who picks Lester up and the two escape on a dragon-like creature, flying off to the horizon.
