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In 1991, Delphine Software was an obscure French developer, known at that point for the ravishing but deeply flawed point ‘n’ click adventure Future Wars and the spy-‘em-up Operation Stealth. With Another World, in the hands of auteur programmer Eric Chahi, they took their visual talents and movie narrative impulses to alien climes.

A wonderful introduction sequence conjures a rich atmosphere from the very start. A young scientist works late and alone. A storm rages outside. As he powers up an experimental device, lightning strikes the facility, opening a portal that whisks him away to a different planet, possibly a different dimension.

At this point there is a classic transition: you the player aren’t aware that the game has begun and that you are in control. Failure to react means death. Suddenly, you really are in another world, and the presentation is out of this world.

The graphics are...

The cinematic classic, Another World, is returning, arriving on the PS4 next week...

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Another World is over 20 years old (23 to be precise), and is one of the earliest examples of cinematic gaming, blending platforming, shooting and puzzling with a level of storytelling and characterisation few games had even started to approach at the time. Even today, Another World, also known as Out of This World in the Us, is more adept at delivering an unforgettable tale than most releases, even without a word of dialogue, and it's headed back to our screens via the PS4.

Set to arrive on Psn next week, the game has been remastered to run at 2560x1600 with full anti-aliased visuals, at the same time retaining the unique feel of the original vision. Creator, Eric Chahi, more recently known for From Dust, and previously Heart of Darkness and Time Travellers, is returning to his magnum...

Add "Candle," a recently-Kickstarted graphic adventure game, to your list of inventive point-and-click games developed by out-of-nowhere indie devs1.

"Candle" is hybrid platformed and point-and-click game from Spanish indies Teku Studios. Sporting a hand-drawn, hand-painted art style reminiscent of the cramped, detailed robotics in Amanita Design's "Machinarium," "Candle" is about using flickering firelight to solve puzzles and uncover whatever mysteries it's hand-painted world is hiding.

For a clearer look at how "Candle" actually works, here's a gameplay video, with commentary from the developers. (Blow that thing up to full screen to get a better look at the art.)

According to the game's Kickstarter pitch, Teku's proprietary shaders and lighting engine should do some neat things with "Candle"'s eponymous mechanics, which should (hopefully!) open doors for some neat pointing, clicking, and adventuring. Here's the skinny:'

The shaman pupil Teku begins his journey after his village is attacked by the rival tribe of the Atipax.

by Joseph Leray

Xbox 360 spokesbro Major Nelson has kindly detailed his company's Summer of Arcade promotion for us: it starts on August 7th and will feature four games that cost between 800 and 1200 Microsoft points (i.e., between $10 and $15).

Here's the breakdown:

'Brothers: a Tale of two Sons' launches August 7th for 1,200 Points

'Charlie Murder' launches August 14th for 800 Points

'Flashback' launches August 21st for 800 Points

'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows' launches August 28th for 1,200 Points

"Brothers" is an adventure game by Starbreeze Studios, the team behind the "Chronicles of Riddick" series, the first "Darkness" game, and the most recent "Syndicate" reboot. Players will control both of the titular brothers at the same time -- one on each analog stick -- guiding them through a series of puzzles and Npc interactions on a journey to save their dying father.

Starbreeze's contribution to the Summer of Arcade...

by Joseph Leray

With Moonbot's "Golem" facing an uncertain financial future, my dream of playing as a mystical, towering piece of rock come to life will be a dream deferred until further notice.

Thankfully Abbey Games is soon releasing "Reus," their gorgeous 2D god game.  Just look at that mountain god in the trailer, though -- that's what I'm talking about! He's got a big barrel chest and sad green eyes, but heavy is the head that bears the fate of all humanity, I guess.

The elevator pitch for "Reus" is that players control three different deities, responsible for planning and forming the earth in a way that is conducive to human life. The earth god can create mineral rich mountains to steer humanity toward industry. Forests spring up like dandelions under the nature giant's green thumb, but only if the cosmic crab has created a nearby water source.

The...

This year GameCity – the UK’s biggest indie games festival – will be running for a mammoth 7 days, from 20th-27th October. Now entering its 7th year, the GameCity team have already announced some of the attractions for this year’s festival with a full lineup to follow in the run-up to the Nottingham event, but here are 7 things I’d personally love to see (some more likely than others).

1. Charlie Brooker to Judge the GameCity Prize

The desire of festival fans to see self-proclaimed gamer Charlie Brooker sit on the GameCity Prize judging panel has been knocking round the Twittersphere since last year’s festival, and since this year’s judges are still closely under wraps it remains a tantalising possibility.

The jury for last year’s inaugural GameCity Prize was drawn from a broad spectrum of figures outside of the game industry itself – ranging from musician Nitin Sawhney to...

Tonight the BAFTA Video Game Awards are being held in London and the list of nominees shows the breadth of talent being celebrated and you can watch along live with us.

BAFTA’s push to educate people about the importance of gaming and to celebrate the very best in this medium is commendable and they are best placed to do this with access to the top names in the industry.

The titles being celebrated tonight include the annual editions of the most popular franchises but there’s a lot of innovation on show; the latest version of Call of Duty, Portal 2, Super Mario 3D Land and the internet-conquerinig Skyrim are all up for awards tonight along with many more.

The IGN stream will go live from 20.15 and you can watch along below,

Here’s the feed, enjoy!

The 2012 BAFTA Game Award nominees are below,

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Assassin’s Creed Revelations - Martin Schelling,...

Last week it was all about the 2012 BAFTA Film Awards, and now sees our attention turn to gaming with the announcement of the nominees for the BAFTA Video Game Awards 2012. We were there last year and hope to be covering it again this year. But in the meantime here’s the full list of nominees, featuring the cream of the crop of video gaming.

Personally I hope Uncharted 3 sweeps the board in all the categories its nominated in, and – being a Mario fan – I hope Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 pick up awards… although Dead Space iOS could give them a run for the money in the handheld categories!

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Assassin’s Creed Revelations – Martin Schelling, Darby McDevitt, Raphael Lacoste / Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft Batman: Arkham City – Jamie Walker, Sefton Hill, Adam Doherty / Rocksteady Studios/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 – Development Team / Infinity Ward...

Last week was all about the movie awards but now BAFTA keep up the momentum by announcing the nominations for the 2012 Video Game Awards. Batman: Arkham City and L.A. Noire come in strong but we’ve got the full list for you below.

Let us know in the comments section below which you want to win and what’s missing from the list.

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Assassin’s Creed Revelations - Martin Schelling, Darby McDevitt, Raphael Lacoste / Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft Batman: Arkham City – Jamie Walker, Sefton Hill, Adam Doherty / Rocksteady Studios/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 – Development Team / Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games/Activision Blizzard Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Jean-Francois Dugas, Antoine Thisdale / Eidos Montreal/Ubisoft Portal 2 – Development Team / Valve/Valve Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception – Evan Wells, Christophe Balestra, Amy Henni g/Naughty Dog/Sony Computers Entertainment Europe

Artistic Achievement

Batman: Arkham City – Jamie Walker,...

Looking back on 2011, it might seem that the year was dominated by the flurry of big-name titles released in gaming’s traditional blockbuster season; November and December saw the release of Modern Warfare 3, Uncharted 3, Elder Scrolls: Skyrim and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, while Batman: Arkham City sneaked out earlier in October.

The year also saw its fair share of high-quality, lovingly crafted independent releases: Super Meat Boy was finally released and is currently enjoying additional late-in-the-year exposure after its inclusion in the Christmas Humble Indie Bundle; Eric Chahi’s From Dust went on to sell over half a million copies after its release in the summer; Limbo received a wider multi-platform release and universal critical acclaim; and, of course, Minecraft exceeded anybody’s expectations and became the surprise smash hit of the year.

It’s always impossible to predict which indie games will be a success – or which will even...

Taking over Nottingham’s city centre and laying on a roster of mostly free events over four days, the festival goes way beyond just playing games: previous events have included art exhibitions, director commentaries, playground building, live videogame recreations, gigs, three World Record achievements, arcade trails and club nights – and this year’s festival added into the mix film premieres, human games consoles, zombie pageants and “molecular gastronomy” dining experiences.

The festival kicked off on Wednesday with an entire day curated by game design legend and Another World creator Eric Chahi: the above-mentioned molecular gastronomy experience My Dinner With Eric was apparently particularly wonderful, featuring stereoscopic food and other bizarre culinary concoctions.

Fittingly, Fear Friday added some Halloween celebrations to the mix, as the festival devoted a day to horror-themed games, books and films. Comedian and zombie horror writer Charlie Higson performed a reading from his new novel The Fear,...

It's pretty rare to find a game these days that intentionally thrusts players into a mysterious and deadly world with little to no instruction to guide them. No tutorial, no on-screen prompts, no nothing. You arrive in a place of danger and the only way you can learn how to survive is by dying a whole bunch. Recent examples, like "Limbo" and "Minecraft" are few and far between, but in the '80s and '90s, brutally merciless games were pretty common. One of my favorites was "Out of this World," also known as "Another World" across the globe. And now the game's creator, Eric Chahi, is bringing his alien adventure to iPhone and iPad on September 22.

Chahi originally announced the project at Gdc earlier this year, and now we're finally going to have a chance to see how it turned out. The iOS version will feature updated graphics, with...

I don’t ever want to be bored with video games. I’ll loathe the day any sighing fatigue returns. I’m not predicting a wall of collective unoriginality, but it is still fair to say there have been dry spells before, so it wouldn’t be out of the question for it to happen again. This year has been good to us. Even if they aren’t the masterpieces of the ages, the fact we’ve been given Eric Chahi, Suda 51 and Tetsuya Mizuguchi games in relatively the same month does speak about the gear publishers are currently willing to work in. Japanese game makers, some more vocal than others, have been lamenting the decline of their contributions to the gaming environment, their popularity, their originality. Final Fantasy, Silent Hill, Devil May Cry, Katamari, among others, seemed mere years ago the most potent titles. But that age has apparently ended.

There are certain videogames that you play when you are very young — say, between the ages of 6 and 9, when your brain is still stitching itself together and your hormones haven’t fully kicked on — that occupy a curiously strong place in your memory. As you get older, the games begin to take on the double resonance of literal memory and recurring dream; they can even begin to seem more real than your actual memories from that time. For me, Eric Chahi’s Out of This World is that game. A semi-forgotten example of a semi-forgotten genre released in the semi-forgotten...

This is it: Eric Chahi’s much-ballyhooed God game. Only, the latest from the Frenchman behind Out Of This World isn’t exactly a God game, it’s more a strategy sandbox title—and it’s as curious/confounding as that alliteration suggests. A mishmash of SimCity, Lemmings, Katamari Damacy, and Populous, From Dust casts you in the thankless role of protector of a tribe of masked nomads in a world that clearly just wants these people to die in a natural disaster. Your main means of assuring that doesn’t happen is with your almighty Breath, which can scoop ...

The newest downloadable Xbox 360 release in Microsoft's Summer of Arcade promotion is, in a nutshell, SimCity as filtered through an aboriginal lens. This visionary game comes from Eric Chahi, the pioneering indie developer who made the classic "Another World."

In "From Dust," players get to embody a Higher Power known as the Breath, summoned by a wandering tribe of brown folk to shepherd them on a journey to reconnect with the legacy of the Ancients. The Breath earns the ability to manipulate the elements, with knowledge of such transmitted through music. So, you have to unlock songs to create various feats of wonder like creating a force field that shields villages from giant tsunami waves.

You're essentially creating a series of homelands for the people in "From Dust" and you do that by gaining and wielding power over the elements. So, you'll move massive mounds of earth to bridge chasms,...

Summer of Arcade continues with From Dust (Ubisoft Montpellier/Ubisoft), the second release in Xbox Live Arcade’s hot summer series. Launching 27th July, From Dust is the latest original concept by Eric Chahi, visionary creator of Another World. In this game, you’ll behold the beauty of a primitive world pulsing with life and face the might of nature. August 3rd will see the launch of Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (Fuelcell/Microsoft Studios) where players explore the depths of several interconnected themed areas, fighting swarms of enemies, battling bosses, solving mind-bending puzzles and acquiring power-ups to unlock new parts of the map. A great fusion of art and classical animation in this adventure created by artist Michel Gagne and game industry veteran Joe Olson.

Here’s the current release schedule for Xbox Live Marketplace content, including new Xbla releases, the latest movies via Zune and week of releases, up to to August 4th.

From Dust headlines this week's Xbox Live update. Microsoft's Summer of Arcade continues with the simulation game from famed Another World creator Eric Chahi. Guide tribesmen across dangerous lands filled with volcanoes, tsunamis, flash floods and forest fires. Download it for 1200 Ms points (£10.20 / $$15). Also available for download this week are Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, Shaun White Skateboarding, Ashes Cricket (UK only) and Prison Break (Us only) for Games on Demand. > Read last week's Xbox Live update

> Read our review of From Dust The update in full: Games From Dust (1200 Ms points / £10.20 / $$15) Games On Demand Need for Speed Hot Pursuit (£29.99 / $$39.99)

Shaun White Skateboarding (£19.99 / $$29.99)

Prison Break (£14.99 / $$19.99)

Ashes Cricket (UK only) (£17.99) (more)...

Puzzlingly, top-tier video games tend to get really scarce in the summer. (This June, with "Infamous 2," "Shadows of the Damned" and other games has been an anomaly.) Maybe it's because publishers want buyers to spend their cash on the highly hyped releases that flood retail from September to December each year, or they think that players' vacations take them away their consoles.

Whatever the reason, Microsoft's taken advantage of video games' dog-day doldrums for the last few years, and packaged promising downloadable games into a programming block called Summer of Arcade. It makes use of the Xbox 360's Xbox Live service to digitally deliver a handful of games The featured titles have been a mix of big studio games and indie efforts and last year's standouts included "Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light" and "Limbo," a title that's gone down as an all-time classic.

While this year's roster was...

Here’s the official E3 trailer for “From Dust” coming soon to Xbox 360, PS3, PC. Game Description: Created by famed French videogame designer Eric Chahi, this mysterious game tells of a world in terrible disorder, one that only you can set right again. Commanding the world around you as a child in a sandbox, players will help their people resist, expand and migrate so they can accomplish their quest to find a safe place in a land ravaged by the violent and catastrophic ways of Nature. Gameplay in this innovative game is based on advanced technology that allows the entire world to act dynamically. The ground, water, and vegetation are...

Eric Chahi is no stranger to world creation. One of his best-known games, "Another World" (called "Out of this World" in the Us), took players to lush alien planet filled with deadly creatures and devious traps. But "Another World" was carefully designed by Chahi himself. What if the world creation was placed in the hands of the player? Enter "From Dust," stage awesome.

"From Dust" is a god game in the vein of "Black & White" or even "SimCity." As a god, your objective is to keep your native villagers safe. The hook, though, is that you have no direct control over your villagers. In fact, all you can control is the land around them. You're able to collect a massive handful of dirt and dump it across a river to make a land bridge, for example.

What makes this so interesting is the remarkable world engine that runs in the background.

Over 19,000 people attended this year's Game Developer's Conference to soak their minds in the rich, brainy stew alongside other game-loving, game-making individuals. Among those people were Toru Iwatani, Jordan Mechner and John Romero.

If you don't know who they are, then maybe the names of their creations-"Pac-Man," "Prince of Persia" and "Doom"-will ring a few bells. Yeah, I thought so. All these men and a few more hallowed game designers took part in Gdc 2011's Classic Game Post-Mortems, in celebration of the 25th Edition of the conference. I've already talked about how riveting and inspirational Eric Chahi's talk was and now Gdc made the other presentation in the series available to watch for free. Just go to the Gdc Vault website and click on Gdc 2011. Once there, you'll find

One thing that you'll note about the talks and the designers who give them is that they were...

The story begins with stormy, violent seas battering a group of weathered cliffs. Sat on top is a crowd of ant-like figures, huddled in a circle, wondering what on earth to do next. As an ancient tribe who has forgotten their purpose and history, they set out to explore the lands around them, looking for traces of their past. As the opening shot suggests, nature conspires against them, and so they call upon a deity (that's you, by the way) to help them survive their journey, repopulate the land and give them a reason for being. From Dust is the latest game from Eric Chahi, the creative force behind cult 16-bit platformer Another World, and this title shares a similar fondness for foreign landscapes and mysterious narrative. While it comes across as a strategy title, or more accurately a god game, such labels conjure up thoughts of complexity and micro-managing,...

Also known as "Another World," "Out of This World"constantly gets mentioned as one the creative high points of the video game medium, even more than two decades after its release. Eric Chahi's sci-fi adventure centered on scientist Lester Chaykin, who gets accidentally transported to an alien world where he must break out of jail and conquer a variety of puzzles and enemies with a hulking helpmate. "Ootw" was practically a wordless affair and pioneered the use of the now-ubiquitous cutscene for storytelling and dramatic purposes.

Chahi participated in the Game Development Conference's Classic Post-Mortem series, where designers of beloved games like "Pac-Man," "Doom" and "Bejeweled" talked about the birthing of their creations. Throughout his hour-long talk, he highlighted the technical limitations of making a game 20 years ago. For example, he explained that the computers of 1989 could only render 16 colors, so some hues were used more than once. The...

Another World will be re-released on iPhone and iPad later this year, it has been revealed. Creator Eric Chahi confirmed the news during a post-mortem panel at the Game Developers Conference earlier this week, according to Eurogamer. "I'm very pleased to work with my developer friends from DotEmu and their partner BulkyPix," said Chahi. "The first prototype looks beautiful on iPad, they are doing a (more)...

One of our favorite collective pastimes as gamers is looking back on all of the great stuff we played in the before time, when "joystick" referred to the thing sticking out of the machine you shoved your quarters into. This year's Game Developer's Conference, which goes down in San Francisco between February 28 and March 4, will pay particular attention to that facet of our shared experience with 11 developer-hosted "classic" postmortems.

The idea is to put the developer of each of the 11 featured titles onto a stage and have him -- they're all dudes -- take questions on their work from the gathered attendees. It's a pretty all star lineup that the Gdc planners have put together, including several of the show's own past (and present) Lifetime Achievement Award winners. For those of us who won't be able to make it to San Francisco, the 11 lectures will be filmed and made available...

Does anybody else remember this game?

Another World was a game released in 1991 by Eric Chahi. It featured a Physicist with a Corvette arriving to his underground laboratory and initiates an experiment with a particle accelerator during a thunderstorm. Just as the experiment begins a thunder strikes the laboratory and teleports the character to an alien world. There he escapes prison by the help of a friendly alien and... Well, the game doesn't really lead anywhere since we never return back to Earth...

I remember watching my older bro playing this whole days, when I was a kid. I never got to play it actually... But oh well, a nice memory... 

 ...

E3 2010 is officially a thing of the past, and like many of the conferences that have come before it there were some highlights and some low-lights. We've combed through the glut of information and press conferences that went down over the course of the five day event, and we've put together our choices for the five best presentations from this year's biggest gaming conference.

PS3 Steams Up

Whether you like it or not, six months ago if you had said that Valve's gaming platform Steam was going to appear anywhere other than on PCs most gamers would have thought you were crazy. However, since March Steam has launched on Macs, and at Sony's presser, Valve's co-founder Gabe Newell announced (albeit a little awkwardly) that "Portal 2" and Steamworks would be making its way to consoles via the PS3. While it may not be the same as Steam proper, this level of...