MS-DOS Game 'Ecstatica'

[trickybus]

I have no experience with MS-DOS games.

I discovered Ecstatica (1994) through OneyPlays and I'm trying to find more information on it, particularly about the game's monster AI. I'm specifically impressed with the werewolf: he's got great path-finding, unique animations for ambushing the player, a solid (if somewhat cheap) grasp on the fighting mechanics, and displays self-preservation behavior when he experiences resistance.

I can't think of another retro survival horror game that has such diverse behavior for a chasing monster. Even survival horror games considered masterpieces, like Silent Hill 2, have basic monster interactions *insert metal pipe noises here*. Was it considered too action-y for survival horror? Did early console the hardware make similar feats nonviable? Inquiring minds just got to know!

The OneyPlays video for anyone who's curious:

And the Repo link:
https://retrogametalk.com/repository/msdos/ecstatica-dos-iso/

 

[Spike's iconSpike]

I remember uploading this for DOSBOX, it's weird yeah.

Also has a sequel

Ecstatica II screenshots - MobyGames

In-game screenshots for Ecstatica II

www.mobygames.com

EDIT: I found there's a re-release for windows on CD-ROM I'll upload that. Has better graphics allegedly.

 

[pr0xy]

I didn't know this game existed.
It actually looks pretty amazing, especially considering it's from 1994. I might give it a try next time I feel the itch for a horror game.

 

[Pinballbuzzbro]

This game in general is insanely impressive. The rly smooth animations, the use of pre-rendered backgrounds and vectorman sprites, the sheer ammount of unique enemies and characters there are, it's basically the precursor to resident evil and deserves to be talked about just as much (if not more) than sweet home and alone in the dark when it comes to innovating the survival horror genre. Also it has a sentient table boss fight which instantly makes it a 10/10

 

[lil_thang]

i only heard about this through a youtube year or so ago, this upload is for the sequel but pretty sure he covered the first as well. not helpful to your technical query but might give some background info or something

 

[trickybus]

This game in general is insanely impressive. The rly smooth animations, the use of pre-rendered backgrounds and vectorman sprites, the sheer ammount of unique enemies and characters there are, it's basically the precursor to resident evil and deserves to be talked about just as much (if not more) than sweet home and alone in the dark when it comes to innovating the survival horror genre. Also it has a sentient table boss fight which instantly makes it a 10/10

The sentient table is part of the video I linked! That was so out of left field

Overall, the game has a non-standard mix of horror and humor. I know Resident Evil has its campy charm but a lot of it wasn't intentional. Meanwhile, Ecstatica has 'game over' cutscenes featuring all the monsters hanging out and talking shit about the player. It's so bizarre in the best way!

 

[trickybus]

Okay, popping back in to report on my findings because I'm motivated

Two credited developers stand out in particular: Alain Maindron and Andrew Spencer. Maindron is credited as the writer and animator for Ecstatica, so he's likely responsible for the more complex animations such as the cutscenes and the werewolf's ambushes. The other reason why I believe Maindron had a substantial effect on the game's animation quality is because of his background in animation. Before Maindron began working on games, he worked as a traditional 2D animator on several large projects. He began involvement with two productions only a few years before working on Ecstatica: the American animated film An American Tale: Fievel Goes West (1991) and The Dreamstone (1990-1995), a British animated TV series that ran for four seasons.

Andrew Spencer was the programmer, system designer and founder of the titular Andrew Spencer Studios, the studio officially behind Ecstatica and it's sequel. Like Maindron, Spencer had an exstensive background in his area of expertise: he'd already written, designed, and programmed several games for the Commodore 64, another for the Amiga, and yet another for DOS throughout the 80s (I've read claims that he studied mathematics and computer science before developing those games but I can't find a source corroborating that information). The unusually intelligent monster AI is his work and the reason I started doing this research in the first place.

Unfortunately, there isn't much information that I can find on Spencer because shortly after the release of Ecstatica II and the cancellation of another game, Urban Decay, Spencer quit game development. The only picture I can find of him at the time allegedly comes from e German gaming magazine but as I cannot speak German nor am I familiar with early 90s gaming magazines from Germany, I likely won't be running into any new information soon :(

I'm leaving some links here for those who are interested:

This is an Ecstatica wiki that explains the technical details behind the ellipsoid models and the game engine's event manager.

These are Andrew Spencer's game credits.

Alain Maindron's game credits. A link to his movie credits on IMDB is also included.

This is a forum post that records an interview which occurred between a user named boogie76 and Andrew Spencer. The topic is regarding one of Spencer's Commodore 64 games.

The German magazine photo of Spencer:

 

[_oBSOLEte_]

I didnt play the game back then. Was busy with Dragon Lore and didnt like the look of it. If you're better with French you can check this.

 

[trickybus]

I didnt play the game back then. Was busy with Dragon Lore and didnt like the look of it. If you're better with French you can check this.

I appreciate this!

 

[_oBSOLEte_]

I appreciate this!

I'm here to practice my engrish after all. I think what's relevant for you on the page is :
Joystick : Ecstatica's monsters seem to have been purveyed with personality and feelings. How did you manage to get this result?
Maindron : It's true, the werewolf's behavior, for example, evolve depending on the player's actions and his incarnated form. In fact, what's changing, are the animations. But it seems to confer feelings. Regarding programming in Ecstatica, there's two types of animations. Animations related to the situation or status (i.e. when falling on a rock at the village's entrace, when hurt). And then there are monsters's animations adapted to the player's reactions (the werewolf get scared when hit several times, it looks puzzled at the transformed player, not attacking...)

They also talk about the somewhat heavy requirement to be able to run the game at the time, as the full install on disk was a whopping 70MB, and said their team would increase for a sequel made to run on cheaper hardware than Pentium. I believe I still had a 486 at the time, but I already got the CDRom for Dragon Lore so the game was basically out of my league.

 

[trickybus]

I'm here to practice my engrish after all. I think what's relevant for you on the page is :
Joystick : Ecstatica's monsters seem to have been purveyed with personality and feelings. How did you manage to get this result?
Maindron : It's true, the werewolf's behavior, for example, evolve depending on the player's actions and his incarnated form. In fact, what's changing, are the animations. But it seems to confer feelings. Regarding programming in Ecstatica, there's two types of animations. Animations related to the situation or status (i.e. when falling on a rock at the village's entrace, when hurt). And then there are monsters's animations adapted to the player's reactions (the werewolf get scared when hit several times, it looks puzzled at the transformed player, not attacking...)

They also talk about the somewhat heavy requirement to be able to run the game at the time, as the full install on disk was a whopping 70MB, and said their team would increase for a sequel made to run on cheaper hardware than Pentium. I believe I still had a 486 at the time, but I already got the CDRom for Dragon Lore so the game was basically out of my league.

You're amazing!

 

[LiberoVulpesLiberoVulpes's icon]

I have read the HardcoreGaming101 article about it, and seen that very same OneyPlays video, interesting game to say the least.

Umm... Maybe i should review it.

 

[lil_thang]

thanks for posting your updated findings, trickybus. indeed a fascinating ahead of its time product.

if you find any further technical explanation of it please repost it here. learning of this game particularly resonated with me as my first introduction to 3d modelling was metaballs in 3dstudiomax sometime early 2000s (well after Ecstatica did its shtick)

 

[DanCalibur]

He began involvement with two productions only a few years before working on Ecstatica: the American animated film An American Tale: Fievel Goes West (1991) and The Dreamstone (1990-1995), a British animated TV series that ran for four seasons.

I had completely forgotten about The Dreamstone

 

[trickybus]

I had completely forgotten about The Dreamstone

Have anything to share about it? I've never watched it.

Post automatically merged: Mar 20, 2025

I have read the HardcoreGaming101 article about it, and seen that very same OneyPlays video, interesting game to say the least.

Umm... Maybe i should review it.

You absolutely should!

 

[DanCalibur]

Have anything to share about it? I've never watched it.

Not much, just one of those nostalgic cartoons from childhood that I barely remember but can pull me back to those times once I hear the song

 

[trickybus]

Not much, just one of those nostalgic cartoons from childhood that I barely remember but can pull me back to those times once I hear the song

The opening sequence reminds me of an animated film called Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland

 

[DanCalibur]

Is this related to the old NES game?

 

[trickybus]

Is this related to the old NES game?

Yup! Same IP.

 

[LiberoVulpesLiberoVulpes's icon]

By the way, found this about their cancelled game.

 

[trickybus]

By the way, found this about their cancelled game.
View attachment 46247View attachment 46246

Wow, they managed to improve the human models to an impressive degree. I'm really bummed Spencer couldn't get this finished

 

[xesf]

Urban Decay was just a prototype, and they decided to do Ecstatica 2 instead.
Most likely forced by Psygnosis to do a sequel, just by looking at that articlewe can see it looked sick!!

Ecstatica is one of my favorite games, its such a great game in various aspects, the dark humour, the animations, the movie like scenes, the music and tention built because of the warewolf. As soon as you know how to beat the werewolf, things become less caotic. If you like Soul Games, this is most likely the first one!
It is an impressive piece of tech, doing their own thing and exploring different ways of displaying 3d without polygons. Andrew end-up being a professor, there's very few details where he is now, while Alain is still active in the industry and left Ecstatica 1 to do Spyro and Prince of Persia. He just released a game in May called The Midnight Walk.

Technically, Ecstatica 2 improved a lot, bumped the graphics and mixed polygons with ellipsoids, better palette management, although the game itself has too much randomness on it and it is a constant struggle to run in the scene and monsters poping from nowhere.

The North America version of Ecstatica 2 bundle Ecstatica 1 for Free and compatible with Windows 95. I think due to shipping Ecstatica 2 they didn't pay attention to Ecstatica 1 testing with the new engine so there's a few issues here and there, but overall it is a much better version specially for the Controls update (you can turn while running).

Both games with some workarounds can be made to work on a Steam Deck using Wine, with re-assignde controls from numpad to buttons/triggers.

Edit: Trivia - Ecstatica 2 has a gun model from Urban Decan :)

 

[trickybus]

Urban Decay was just a prototype, and they decided to do Ecstatica 2 instead.
Most likely forced by Psygnosis to do a sequel, just by looking at that articlewe can see it looked sick!!

Ecstatica is one of my favorite games, its such a great game in various aspects, the dark humour, the animations, the movie like scenes, the music and tention built because of the warewolf. As soon as you know how to beat the werewolf, things become less caotic. If you like Soul Games, this is most likely the first one!
It is an impressive piece of tech, doing their own thing and exploring different ways of displaying 3d without polygons. Andrew end-up being a professor, there's very few details where he is now, while Alain is still active in the industry and left Ecstatica 1 to do Spyro and Prince of Persia. He just released a game in May called The Midnight Walk.

Technically, Ecstatica 2 improved a lot, bumped the graphics and mixed polygons with ellipsoids, better palette management, although the game itself has too much randomness on it and it is a constant struggle to run in the scene and monsters poping from nowhere.

The North America version of Ecstatica 2 bundle Ecstatica 1 for Free and compatible with Windows 95. I think due to shipping Ecstatica 2 they didn't pay attention to Ecstatica 1 testing with the new engine so there's a few issues here and there, but overall it is a much better version specially for the Controls update (you can turn while running).

Both games with some workarounds can be made to work on a Steam Deck using Wine, with re-assignde controls from numpad to buttons/triggers.

Edit: Trivia - Ecstatica 2 has a gun model from Urban Decan :)

Thank you for the extra information! I especially loved the trivia bit at he end. Do you know if the model is accessible during gameplay or is it an Easter Egg hidden in the files?

 

[dropsmegamega]

Great game, surprised to see a thread about it. The mix of low poly with horror gives it a very unique vibe and I like its very open structure. More games should just drop you in a city in which you can explore every building. I recall when I played the werewolf kept killing me so I decided to punch him and I kept at it for several minutes until it finally died, then I could finally explore in peace. Cheap solution, I know.

Technically, Ecstatica 2 improved a lot, bumped the graphics and mixed polygons with ellipsoids, better palette management, although the game itself has too much randomness on it and it is a constant struggle to run in the scene and monsters poping from nowhere.

Yeah, the constant monster spawning was really annoying. I really dislike how the whole game was much more action oriented and also more linear, like it was trying to be some sort of Zelda. Even the story is more generic with the typical "recover several artifacts to finally be able to fight evil wizard".

 

[trickybus]

I recall when I played the werewolf kept killing me so I decided to punch him and I kept at it for several minutes until it finally died, then I could finally explore in peace. Cheap solution, I know.

That werewolf was the reason why I started this thread! I'm fascinated by the complexity of its AI and the smoothness of its animation for a game that released in 1994/7. Really wish other horror games from that era took inspiration from Ecstatica's monster behavior.