Another World (video game)

Lore & Background

Another World was developed by Chahi alone over a period of about two years, with help with the soundtrack from Jean-François Freitas. Chahi developed his own game engine, creating 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.

The game's French designer Éric Chahi had previously worked as a graphic designer on Future Wars (1989), and did not work as a game programmer before Another World.

Reader's Guide

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 Delphine's later Flashback. The game features 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. The player acquires a laser pistol from a fallen foe with three capabilities: standard fire, force fields, and a charged shot. Lester and his alien ally cannot sustain any damage, and the game ends immediately if either is struck. The game uses numerous checkpoints enabling the player to keep restarting at the last point indefinitely. 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 swimming sequences, and no on-screen text; characters speak in an unintelligible alien language. The game's development involved Chahi writing a polygon routine for the Motorola 68000 on an Atari ST, later achieving about 20 frames per second on the Amiga. He used rotoscoped animations with polygons, using video recordings of himself performing various actions. Chahi improvised when creating the actual content, allowing the game to develop 'layer by layer without knowing where it was going.'

Did You Know?

• The game was published in North America as Out of This World.
• Chahi used rotoscoping by recording video of himself performing actions to plan character movements.

The Solo Vision Behind the Code

Éric Chahi, a French designer who had been programming and creating graphics for games since 1983, made Another World essentially as a one-person project over roughly two years. The financial freedom he gained from royalties on his earlier work with Paul Cuisset on Future Wars (1989) allowed him to develop the game without editorial pressure or constraints. He built his own engine from scratch, initially writing graphical routines in C before switching to assembly language for the Motorola 68000. A pivotal moment came in August 1989 when the flat-color animations in the Amiga port of Dragon's Lair convinced him that vector outlines could achieve a similar look while consuming far less storage. After testing a polygon routine on an Atari ST, he confirmed the code ran on the Amiga at approximately 20 frames per second—a breakthrough he later called a major turning point. Jean-François Freitas contributed the soundtrack, but every piece of art and animation was Chahi's own, rendered in vector form and planned with rotoscoping to guide character movement.

A Game That Refuses to Explain Itself

Another World strips away nearly every convention players expect. There is no heads-up display beyond an oxygen meter during underwater sequences, no on-screen text, and no dialogue the player can understand—every character speaks in an alien tongue. The game offers no hints about what to do next and provides no user-interface elements to guide progress. This radical minimalism extends to the control scheme: the player runs, jumps, attacks, and performs context-specific actions like rocking a cage, all through a keyboard, joystick, or gamepad. Combat is equally unforgiving. Lester and his alien companion Buddy cannot absorb a single hit; one projectile or touch from a creature or hazard ends the run instantly. The game compensates with frequent checkpoints, and on systems without save functionality, players could jot down alphanumeric codes to resume later. The laser pistol, acquired mid-game, offers three distinct modes—standard fire, force-field generation, and a charged shot that pierces barriers—mirroring the abilities of the enemies who wield the same technology.

A Story Told in Lightning and Silence

The narrative opens with a thunderstorm. Lester Knight Chaykin, a young physicist, arrives at his underground laboratory in a black Ferrari and begins an experiment with a particle accelerator, attempting to reconstruct the birth of the universe. A lightning strike disrupts the accelerator, triggering an uncontrolled fusion and explosion that tears a hole in time and space, hurling Lester onto a desolate alien world. After dodging predatory indigenous animals, he is captured by humanoid aliens and imprisoned in a subterranean camp. There he befriends a fellow captive called Buddy, and the two escape together. Their journey carries them through a prison complex, a sprawling cave system, and a towering structure, with the pair battling soldiers, wild creatures, and solving puzzles along the way. In the climax, Lester is gravely wounded by one of the aliens but, with Buddy's aid, defeats his attacker. Collapsing at the tower's peak, he is lifted by Buddy, and the two flee on a dragon-like creature, vanishing into the horizon.

Ripples Across a Generation of Games

Released by Delphine Software in November 1991 and marketed as Out of This World in North America, Another World quickly earned critical acclaim and commercial success, largely for its pioneering use of cinematic techniques in both real-time gameplay and cutscenes. Its influence radiated outward in ways Chahi likely could not have predicted. Designers and studios cited it as a touchstone for titles as varied as Ico, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, and Delphine's own later title Flashback. The game's philosophy—telling a story with minimal language, relying on atmosphere, visual storytelling, and player intuition—became a blueprint for narrative-driven action games that followed. Originally built for the Amiga and Atari ST, it was subsequently ported across a wide range of home and portable consoles and mobile platforms. Chahi has personally overseen various anniversary editions, keeping the title in circulation decades after its debut. Today it is widely regarded as one of the finest video games ever produced.