Anachronox

Anachronox ( /əˈnækrənɒks/, created from anachronism and noxious) is a 2001 third-person role-playing video game produced by Tom Hall and the Dallas Ion Storm games studio. It offers gameplay in the style of older role-playing video games, such as Chrono Trigger and the Final Fantasy series. The game was built with a heavily modified version of the Quake II engine, rewritten chiefly to allow a wider color palette, emotive animations and facial expressions, and better lighting, particle, and camera effects.

The game features a science fiction story influenced by cyberpunk, film noir, and quirky humor. The story begins as down-and-out private investigator Sylvester "Sly Boots" Bucelli looks for work in the slums of Anachronox, an alien planet near the hub of the galaxy's space-lanes. He travels to other planets and, amassing an unlikely group of friends, unravels a mystery that threatens the existence of the universe. The story features a theme of working through troublesome events of one's past, and ends on a major cliffhanger.

The development of Anachronox was long and difficult; so much content was removed during production that Tom Hall planned to create a sequel. Critics enjoyed the game and awarded it high marks for its design and story, but its developers were disappointed with producer support, and Ion Storm closed its Dallas offices one month after the game's release. Anachronox developed a cult following, and in 2003, the game's cinematic director, Jake Hughes, spliced together sequences and cutscenes into a feature-length, award-winning machinima film.