Open Outcast is a to-be free total conversion of Crysis Wars, planned as a successor to Appeal’s original 1999 release Outcast, a game that remains in many ways the artistic pinnacle of voxel-based graphics. While Novalogic’s series – Comanche and Delta Force – were always the best-known trumpeters of the technology, and though voxels have been utilized in a far lesser role in various strategy games and even in the level editor of Crysis, it was Outcast that made the world of volumetric pixels all its own.
Though the original never saw its promised sequel after the Belgian company went out of business (you can see existing screenshots of the project at Unseen64), the ageless gem is now fortunately available at GOG.com, in full working order – if you’re interested in running your old mothballed copy, the OpenOutcast team have a good tutorial.
The original remains utterly beautiful to this day mostly thanks to its stronger-than-most audiovisual direction and rare feeling of “being there.” The same, however, can also be said of the new fan version:
