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Games

What The FRACT?

Almost like a scene from Mario Kart’s battle mode… but with way better graphics.

In 2009, designer (of sound, graphics, etc.) Richard E. Flanagan decided to quit his day job and went back to school for game design, setting up his own Montreal-based indie game studio, Phosfiend Systems, with his wife. FRACT is an abstract, first person adventure game (for Mac and Windows) that was originally created to obtain his postgraduate diploma in Game Design, but it’s popularity has made it so much more—the beta version has been downloaded almost 20,000 times, and it just won the Independent Game Festival’s award for Best Student Game this past March.

It’s obvious that Flanagan was inspired by the Myst titles, because after watching the trailer for FRACT, we see that the game puts a huge emphasis on both graphic clarity and superb sound design… except the look of the FRACT world is founded specifically on the structure of electronic music.

Flanagan says: It's left to the player to explore the environment to find clues to resurrect and revive the long-forgotten machinery of this musical world, in order to unlock its' inner workings. Drawing inspiration from Myst, Rez and Tron, the game also combines the developer's love of graphic design, data visualization, electronic music and analog culture.

The aesthetic qualities of this game make us believe that it will attract the tastes of more than just the typical gamer… plus not having to own a console to play is a definite bonus. Download here, and watch for the game’s expansion to come some time in 2012.