Out of This World
1991 · Action / Adventure · Amiga / DOS
Overview
Out of This World (1991), Another World in Europe, is Éric Chahi's cinematic action adventure: a scientist stranded on an alien planet fights to escape.
Deep Dive
A lab accident transports physicist Lester Chaykin to a hostile alien world. With no dialogue, no score and no on-screen gauges, the game tells its story entirely through animation and short cinematic scenes, as Lester escapes a prison with an alien companion and fights through caves and a city with a laser pistol that also makes shields. Éric Chahi created almost all of it himself, with vector-based graphics that gave it a striking film-like look.
Developer Story
Out of This World (Another World in Europe) was designed and programmed almost entirely by Éric Chahi at Delphine Software in 1991. Chahi used rotoscoped animation from filmed reference footage and developed a custom engine to render the game's striking polygon-based visuals. The game had no score, no health bar, and no HUD — it played like an interactive film. Chahi spent two years creating it alone, with music by Jean-François Freitas.
Did You Know?
- Éric Chahi designed and programmed almost the entire game by himself over two years — one of the most ambitious solo development efforts in gaming history.
- The game had no HUD, no score, and no health bar — it was designed to be experienced like a film rather than played like an arcade game.
- The polygon-based graphics were hand-rotoscoped from filmed reference footage, giving characters movement that sprite animation couldn't achieve.
- The alien world was never named or explained — players were dropped in without context, experiencing events through Lester's confusion.
- Out of This World was selected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York as one of 14 games in its permanent collection.
Sources & further reading
- Another World (video game) — Wikipedia