Do you remember the feeling of immersion that you had when you played Half-Life for the first time? I just finished playing the 15th Anniversary Edition of Eric Chahi’s Another World (named Out of this World in the US) and I had quite a similar experience of being sucked into an atmospheric game world. In both games you play a scientist who has to learn how to self-defend against other species because of a failed scientific experiment.

While Half-Life is the effort of Valve’s great team work, Another World was almost done completely by Chahi himself – an exceptional talent in programming, art and design. The Anniversary Edition includes a highly interesting Making Of video presenting the little secrets and tricks of his game development process.

Compared to todays standards Another World is both quite short and really hard. Be assured that you will die a thousand deaths and that you’ll need to replay a bunch of levels many many times. It does not help that in theory the controls are elegant and simple, but sloppy and unforgiving in reality. Of course, Another World is one of these precious gems in gaming history well worth the struggle playing through it.

Krystian Majewski wrote at Monday 14. January 2008:

I love Another World. I remember reading about it in an Atari ST magazine when I was a kid(i never had an Atari ST). Later, I was able to play it on a Super Nintendo in a Shop. It was amazing. Recently, I bought a used SNES and of course I just HAD to buy Another World. I love the cool, simplistic graphic stlye, the smooth animations, how they communicate the story without ANY text whatsoever. I tried to play it trough and I’m very far but you just die at every corner. It is so hard – it is hilarious! Very old school game design. I love it!

Zixinus wrote at Thursday 13. November 2008:

I’ve played both the old and remastered edition. I have one resounding opinion: it sucked shit out of my anus. Sorry, I know and agree that it has brilliant graphics (especially for its time), great storytelling and immersive atmosphere. All perfectly and completely ruined by idiotic, bugged gameplay that does not make any fucking sense. Dying every 5-10 seconds in order to figure out what the moon-logic that the developer had for his cinematic-stlye game is not fun and not even challenging. It’s annoying and a profound waste of time.

I like to figure things out for myself, but AW takes it into completely unreasonable levels.

I liked Flashback much more though. Yes, the levels are more cookie-cutter but at least the game was enjoyable.