S P O T L I G H T

Fate – Outpost November

Developed by: PWProductions

2010

The saddest part about amateur game developer is that a good 90% of decent projects around the web will end up being vaporware. Forgotten potential and often far better ideas than what the studios drop on us year after year. Another sad part is that games do get released, even decent ones but fall into obscurity and will be entirely forgotten mere weeks after release. There are some truly decent projects that have been overlooked due the constant onslaught of throwaway, cash grab horror games that are nothing but youtuber fodder and unbalanced multiplayer survival monstrosities.

Fate does not necessarily fall into any of these categories. A demo has been released and, while decent, the project is not some unsung indie master piece. However, its a very solid and atmospheric scifi horror game that I quite liked to follow. The development of the project was interesting. Sadly, the demo is very short and has its problems but it also has a bleak tone and is oozing with atmosphere. The seemingly random and not very fitting choice of enemy models is keeping the game from feeling like it has a unified tone but the level design and sense of claustrophobia it offers are worth trying out. Neat little things, like slightly displaced lights and good use of textures give it some charm.

I can recommend it to fans of old FPSC games and anyone who feels like wasting a few minutes on an homemade horror game demo. A demo of a more ambitious project that sadly never was.

There is a personal element to this game as it looks quite similar to work I did during the same time period. Others have pointed this out as well and the developer replied as follows:

Well, I’d like to start out by saying, “No, I was not inspired by Wolf’s level design in ANY way.” I was chatting with a handful of people on MSN this morning and all of them thought the screenshots I showed them were like Wolf’s. I guess you could say my ‘style’ is similar to Wolf’s (although I’ll never be as good as him), but I wasn’t inspired by him. I was inspired a little bit by his story in his game Sybmiotic.

MSN… aaah! 😀 It seems so long ago. Anyway, this is Symbiotic.

The similarities are there but I am very willing to agree with pwp that its more coincidental. Replaying it, I am also very convinced that he could indeed have become just as good or a better developer than I was.

Unfortunately I have lost all ties to pwproductions and his website as well as original materials of his work in progress media are lost.

I am now quoting the storyline from his development threads and will then also drop a download to the demo he released all these years ago.

Storyline: Humankind has tried to artificially evolve themselves to fast. Technology grew and grew, yet like all things, problems started to generate. The technologic problems started with BioChem Industries, an organisation which caused mankind numerous diseases and deformations beyond imagination. One of the mass breakouts was known as V87-HB. It caused massive deformities and mutations. It’s life-changing capabilities earned it the name ‘Fate‘. The start of BioChem was never found. Survivors sacrificed themselves through hunts for the beginning of the corrupt industry. Yet all who tried either came back beyond distortion, or did not come back at all… You, Shaun Pyrril, a left-to-die survivor of the diseased colony ship ‘Marina‘ have found your way to a BioChem outpost. From there, you may find clues and intel on how to reach the BioChem headquarters and relinquish Fate once and for all. That is… if you survive the outpost.

Development Thread  // Demo Thread

D O W N L O A D