Another World 20th Anniversary (Steam version)

Review

Another World is a game developed by Éric Chahi in 1991 and was originally published by Delphine Software on the Amiga. The game was remastered twice. The version that I played here is the second remaster (20th Anniversary Edition), which was made by DotEmu and came out on Steam in 2013.

It’s an Action/Adventure/Platformer game that is very similar to the original Prince of Persia. They share a lot in common!

As you start the game, you get an intro cinematic that presents you with the main character and tells you what’s going on. You are a scientist that is driving to his lab. (He's driving in a sublime Ferrari 288 GTO… Guess that the wage is really decent.) You seem to work on a project related to a particle accelerator. Of course, the weather is bad; it’s rainy, and a thunderbolt comes out just to mess with your lab (that wouldn’t be funny otherwise).

Boom! There you go! That whole mess happens to teleport you… to Another World! I hope for your sake that you did not plan anything else for tonight.

I just want to mention that it has been a while since I knew this game by name, but I never cared to try it myself until now. I have the perspective of someone who blindly discovered the game. And as the game started already, I must admit that it took me a few seconds (and some deaths too) to realize that the intro had ended and that it was my turn to play. I don’t have the fastest brain in the world 🤦️.

So, after you manage to swim out of the water and get out of this trap, the journey can start for good. It looks like the place is safe enough now. You can take your time to try out the controls, check the menu, and get used to the gameplay. Once you feel confident enough, it is time for you to get out of here and discover this whole new planet!

After a few more screens, where you manage to discover some of the dangers of this new world and avoid a few bad encounters, you get to meet some humanoid figures. It turns out that they are not the most welcoming kind of species, just like the rest of this place so far. They are armed; you are not. It is pretty easy to imagine that what is going to happen will not be good for you!

After you fall unconscious, you wake up after a while, jailed in a floating cage, with another alien pal trapped here and looking at you. At least this one does not look likehe wants to kill you. It is time to escape this place with your new friend!

After managing to free yourself and defeat the guard, you are able to get a laser gun, which plays quite an important part in the gameplay. It will help you defeat the other guards that are trying to stop you while also generating some shields to defend yourself against the enemies' shots.

The following, well, it is just you trying to survive and manage your way to get out of there alive, and hope to return to your home. The whole game has a bit of a try'n'die feeling; because of that, you will probably get killed stupidly by some unexpected traps or guards.

In the end, the game took me approximately three hours to finish, including getting all the achievements.

The graphics:

Another World is a 2-D side-scrolling kind of game. It is beautiful and charming. The art is still visually appealing as of today, and there are some really pleasing areas. I have one concern, however, and it is about the FPS. Having the Steam counter on, it looks like the game averaged between 7-15 FPS on my side. Visually, it resulted in the animations being somewhat laggy. The sound (3/5):

The sound ambiance is nice and realistic. What a shame that there is barely any music here. Aside from the very few cinematics, I don’t think that I ever heard any. I am glad that there are enough sounds to fill up everything, though. It would have been quite empty otherwise

The gameplay:

The gameplay is really simple, with only a few keys that matter. You can play with a controller, but I preferred to play with the keyboard and rebind the keys for more comfort.

The controls feel a bit clunky, and it takes a while to adapt. There is a single key for almost every action (firing, creating a shield, running, etc.) and it is somewhat confusing. You may miss a few shots as well until you get used to how it feels.

The game is really hard, even on normal difficulty. I ended up turning it to easy midway. The worst part for me was the lack of checkpoints in the classic difficulty, which forced me to play through some passages that I had already mastered over and over again, just to end up dying from a trap or an unexpected enemy.

There were a few moments that were not that obvious to me as well, and I died several times until I decided to check for a solution on the internet.

I expected the achievements to be hard to get. Weirdly enough, it turns out that you unlock most of them easily as they are storyline-related, and there is only a single one that you can truly miss during your gameplay. Still, as the game is divided into chapters/areas, you can easily go back at any time to get it. This makes Another World an easy and fast game for 100% achievements, if you can deal with the difficulty of the game itself.

The story:

Well, the story is very basic and somewhat lacking, and it is probably just a pretext for the game. There is not really any kind of lore; I don’t think that this planet has a name, nor do its inhabitants. You are just a nameless guy that gets trapped here randomly. You have to try to survive and get out of here.

Fun meter:

The game is fun to play and has a good bunch of comedic situations. It's too bad that the game feels so hard, and that the gameplay is clunky because it stains the fun meter a bit. That's at least the case for me, not being much of a hardcore gamer. If it is your thing, however, you might be in for a really fun time.

Bonus part

Another World comes with a few bonuses. It's always nice to get some extra content for a game. Here, you get stuff like the making of video, the soundtrack, and even the Amiga ROM! That's really cool! You also have the option of picking between the remastered OST or the original one.

In the end

This is a really short and overall nice game. Despite the difficulty, you might enjoy your stay on this planet. I would not recommend this game to everyone, but if you are not afraid of old-school hard games, you will get a nice couple of hours here!

In conclusion