Anachronox

Anachronox is a 3-D, third person computer role-playing game produced by Tom Hall and the Ion Storm games studio. Development took around three and a half years. The game is built on a heavily modified version of the Quake 2 engine, heavily re-coded to allow for improvements such as a wider color palette as well as more complex character animations (including facial expressions).

The background

About three hundred years ago a number of artifacts were found. Named 'MysTech' (Mysterium Technology), they were believed to be devices left by a long dead alien race. Some of the devices were weapons, others healed and some have not been fully understood.

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A small planetoid-sized reflective sphere, a Sender, was discovered in space. Long spikes could be seen protruding its outer shell at regular intervals. A star pilot approaching the Sender noticed a signal being transmitted by one of the spikes. He found himself accelerating toward the Sender and was then transported to another part of space via some sort of hyperspace tunnel. These came into regular use once ships had been equipped with inertial dampers. Senders later became the hubs of lucrative trade and galactic civilization. Right in the centre of the universe lay Sender One, which orbited the city of Anachronox.

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It is believed that Anachronox was home to millions of quarantined aliens many years ago. These aliens are thought to have died of a horrible plague. Anachronox is now largely a ruin and has become the centre of nefarious dealings in the galaxy.

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Sylvester "Sly" Boots lives in a cheap apartment above Rowdy's, a seedy bar on the seediest street in a section of Anachronox called the Bricks. Somehow surviving an attack from a number of mysterious henchmen, Boots is enlisted by a renegade scientist and begins a perilous journey which pits him against some of the most dangerous enemies in the universe...

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