The white chamber
Encyclopedia
the white chamber is a science fiction
horror amateur adventure game
created by Studio Trophis using the Wintermute Engine
. Originally designed as a university project, it was expanded to a full game and released for Windows as free download in 2005.
The size was one of the contributing factors to the fact that it was originally available exclusively through bittorrent. In an article for PCZone Richard Perrin stated that using bittorrent allowed them to reduce their bandwidth costs greatly. The game is no longer available for direct download on the Studio Trophis site, due to unexpected increases in traffic. There is however, a download link on the site page.
The game has been updated multiple times and is now at version 1.7. It features eight endings and the text in nine languages, English
, Czech
, French
, German
, Greek
, Italian
, Polish
, Portuguese
and Russian
and voice acting in either English or German.
the white chamber and its Wintermute source code have been released under a Creative Commons
license that means anyone is free to share and modify the game as long Studio Trophis is credited, it is not for commercial gain and that the result is made available under a similar license.
IndieGames.com included it in their list of top adventure games of for 2006.
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
horror amateur adventure game
Amateur adventure game
An amateur adventure game is a computer game belonging to the adventure genre that has no commercial or similar official backing. The amateur adventure game scene emerged in the mid to late 1990s, when releases of new commercial adventure games became more rare and easy distribution of games and...
created by Studio Trophis using the Wintermute Engine
Wintermute Engine
Wintermute Engine is a set of software tools and a runtime interpreter primarily designed for creating and running graphical adventure games.-History:...
. Originally designed as a university project, it was expanded to a full game and released for Windows as free download in 2005.
Gameplay
The player controls a girl who awakens in a coffin in a darkened room. She has no memory of how she got there, and opens the windows to reveal that she is in fact in space. The player must solve the puzzles and move from room to room, piecing together what happened to the crew of the station. Along the way, she discovers logs from a technician named Arthur Anderson documenting the mystery of the main laboratory, the titular "white chamber".Release history
The first release of the game was released for free download in 2005, and featured four endings depending on the player's choices during the game. It originally had no voice acting, but several animated sections, including an opening and ending. The inclusion of anime sequences meant the game was over 300mb to download.The size was one of the contributing factors to the fact that it was originally available exclusively through bittorrent. In an article for PCZone Richard Perrin stated that using bittorrent allowed them to reduce their bandwidth costs greatly. The game is no longer available for direct download on the Studio Trophis site, due to unexpected increases in traffic. There is however, a download link on the site page.
The game has been updated multiple times and is now at version 1.7. It features eight endings and the text in nine languages, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and voice acting in either English or German.
the white chamber and its Wintermute source code have been released under a Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
license that means anyone is free to share and modify the game as long Studio Trophis is credited, it is not for commercial gain and that the result is made available under a similar license.
Reception
the white chamber has received very positive critical reaction. The New York Times described it as "Grisly and intriguing, with logical puzzles and surprising plot twists, Chamber is a first-rate garage game." The Inventory magazine called it "A genuinely suspenseful horror game in a marvelously drawn anime style. All in all this game is a marvelous first outing by Studio Trophis."IndieGames.com included it in their list of top adventure games of for 2006.