Let us fix that (camera) for you.

Check our Curator and the most extensive list of Fixed Multicam games on every platform!

Join our Discord[discord.gg] and Stoat[stt.gg] communities!

We appreciate games with direct character control and multiple predefined third person views per room! (Eg. Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil 0, Dino Crisis...)

Fixed multicam is a niche, but a healthy one - the Resident Evil Remake sold 1m copies in three months, which made it Capcom's "fastest selling digital title in history"[www.pcgamesn.com]. Detroit sold 8m copies[www.psu.com] and Telltale's multicam 'Walking Dead' was met with critical and commercial success.

With a wave of new fixed multicam titles like Tormented Souls, The Medium, and Alisa, it's never been more exciting for this cinematic form of gaming!

When fixed multicam pays off, the visuals speak for themselves - while handing the designer a unique level of authorial control over player pacing and situational awareness. It's nothing less than the ability to directly frame the player's visual understanding of the game world, forging and relying upon a bond of trust between player and developer.

There's an untapped vein of criticism on this approach and the analysis of games that employ it. In a medium that values smooth controls and user comfort, fixed multicams can disorient the player... But is that a fatal flaw, or an unsolved and an interesting design problem? One that could be solved with cinematographic consideration or a pure input approach, or...!

Games covered by this Steam Group should feature multiple third-person 'fixed' cameras per-room that frame a character controlled directly by the player (usually no point-and-click).

Positioning and orientation of cameras cannot be directly controlled by the player (eg. as with 'chase' or 'orbit' cams). As players move in and out of 'shot', the game will 'cut' between cameras (ala filmic editing). Tracking and pivot movements of the camera are rare in comparison to 'cuts'.

The Associated Games section on the right of this page only covers titles on Steam, but I'll try to add some relevant links for notable games or moments... Please check our Fixed Multicam Resources for lists of related PC & console games!

Let us know your thoughts & comments in the discussions! Here's to an intentional view!

--Rev

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RECENT ANNOUNCEMENTS

FRESH ANGLES #17: It’s a (fixed cam) frame-up!

July 10 - Reverend Speed | 2 Comments

An occasional newsletter highlighting fixed camera games!

The Fixed Camera Appreciation Society now has its own official DISCORD AND STOAT SERVERS

...with loads of resources and the friendly community you’ve grown to know and love (or at least tolerate).[discord.gg] Our backup Stoat server can be joined here![stt.gg] Drop by and chat with us about upcoming game, classic titles and wibble on about cinematic approaches and the future of fixed camera! See you there!

A quick reminder to tag games as Fixed Camera on Steam[imgur.com] - atm it’s way too hard to find fixed camera games on Steam! Let’s hit that critical mass of games tagged ‘Fixed Camera’ so we can find more of them by searching with that tag! Only YOU can change Valve’s view!

(Disclaimer: Unless stated otherwise, the following are not reviews or recommendations!)

UPCOMING

’Drawn from life’ is one thing, but some of these works are ‘drawn TO life’...! (Demo available)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4483320/Lost_in_Art/
Looking better than Eve’n! A tactical, action RPG set in the near future! (Demo available!)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3983000/Parasite_Mutant/
A dark Japanese tale of exploration, hidden histories and punching each other in the street! (Demo available!)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3903740/Nemunai/
Fall into a burning ring of fire and weird western horror! ORRR…
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1967440/God_Help_Us_All/
...get frozen in ice in a period survival horror adventure in the Antarctic!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3312480/To_the_Bone_1998/
Patient - heal thyself! …By entering your own body in fixed cam! Easy! (Demo Available!)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4870180/Cytokine_Storm/

AVAILABLE NOW

An unsettling wander through an abandoned garden - classic survival horror stylee!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2498630/The_Frozen_Garden/
A FREE horror puzzle game where you explore a spooooky manor! Photonic mechanics!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4493220/28_Leicester_Square/
A strange mystery thriller where a Japanese man must uncover his forgotten past…!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3853830/6days/
A ‘survival horror sokoban’ where you play a chicken under the knife…!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3066660/Ells_Tales_Chicken/

CLASSICS

In the lists of the Fixed Camera Appreciation Society, there are some entries that might seem a little out of place; these are games like Little Nightmares, or Inside. These 2D platformers don’t obviously match the criteria for our group (usually “multiple 3D camera angles per room”), but I think that while the gameplay mostly happens within a single tracking camera per room, the care and staging of cameras and elements make them a strong companion to our main concern, and worthy of consideration.

One of these games is Another World (1991), which came out a year ahead of the first true fixed multicam game, Alone in the Dark (1992).

Developed almost entirely by a sole artist/coder named Éric Chahi, Another World was part of the contemporary growing interest in borrowing from linear cinematography - yet with an Amiga 500 as the target platform (no CD drive and only 512k of memory!)Éric would have to find innovative means by which to achieve his filmic ambitions.

And so, Another World is a static-screen platform game made almost entirely from vector art with animation drawn from rotoscoping, creating a video game aesthetic never seen before and never seen again. Check out the intro sequence - still stunning today (cinematography, design, pacing…). Even the semi-spiritual sequel Flashback returned to using sprites for the majority of its art.

Many ‘scenes’ have multiple cameras, and players used to the difficulty of the opening moments of Resident Evil and Alone in the Dark will feel well at home here. Player movement is driven by animations, which leads to some awkwardness, but with some practice (and trial and error), players will find themselves on a strange and sometimes terrifying adventure of fantasy and friendship.

It’s worth mentioning - upon beginning development, Chahi didn’t have a clear plan on how the game or story would turn out, and so he’s occasionally referred to the entire game as an ‘improvisation’...!

At a time when cinematic ambitions for video games were limited to unplayable cutscenes, ambitious JRPG work with tiny sprites or point-and-click adventures, Chahi’s ambition, artistic flair and impressive code development opened a tiny glimpse of the future. Next year his fellow countrymen would release the world’s first fixed multicam adventure. What was the French government putting in their water in those days?!

NON-STEAM

https://guruzera.itch.io/isolation - Brief horror exploration in abandoned hospital
https://sedeth.itch.io/faultline - Horror puzzler in arctic cavern
https://comma4.itch.io/arcanists-towers - French escape room game
https://spectris-games.itch.io/wicked-woods - Survival horror where you end scaled down?

And, as a bonus - a trailer! White Creek have put out an 'official' trailer - found by Stoibs! Check this out!
_________________

My god, it’s warm here. Make sure you hydrate folks, please take care of yourselves! And do jump into the Discord[discord.gg] or Stoat[stt.gg] - we’d love to talk to you. See you next week! --Rev
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FRESH ANGLES #16: Low angles and lower prices!

June 26 - Reverend Speed | 2 Comments

An occasional newsletter highlighting fixed camera games!

IIIIT’S THE STEAM SUMMER SALE! HIDE YOUR WALLETS!

And there’s plenty of great fixed multicam on sale - check out our curator and click on the DISCOUNTS tab[imgur.com] to find a wealth of awesome cinematic goodness going for very affordable prices!

The Fixed Camera Appreciation Society now has its own official DISCORD AND STOAT SERVERS

UPCOMING

Imagine… a world… beyond your imagination. And it’s a JRPG with prerendered backgrounds!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4446690/Harbingers_of_Destiny/
A low-fi psychological horror with a queer point of view, this looks very interesting!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4296480/They_Cry/
An immersive sim - but with a fixed camera approach?! Now there’s an unusual pitch…! (Demo available!)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2722660/Fraudulent_Idols/
Retro gaming goes wrong, as reality warps and twists into a strange, hostile world…!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3869290/Evil_Cartridge/

AVAILABLE NOW

A short but beautifully executed innocent walk through a forest (Free!)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2438960/Silent_Rooms__Chapter_1/
An interactive mood piece, with some very appealing visuals…!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3922050/Chilling_Silence/
A dystopian cyberpunk adventure - you are the author of our memories! (Demo available!)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4071280/Nocturne_for_CylHestia/
Light puzzle adventuring with a sense of humour in a sinister (?) underground lab. (Demo available!)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1936530/Subsequence/
(EDIT: OOPS! Credit to The Teratoma for pointing out that Fragile Reflection isn’t Fixed Multicam!)
Take another look at Sanguine - the dev has been providing a lot of updates! (Demo available!)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2825080/Sanguine/
The first act of this strange survival-come-Saw thriller! (Demo available!)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4152560/Perished_Truth

CLASSICS

So, Alone in the Dark came out in 1992, followed by sequels and promotional games in 1993. But these games all had (gorgeous) hand-painted backgrounds. The first fixed multicam game to feature pre-rendered backgrounds came out in 1994, developed by Andrew Spencer Studios, published by Psygnosis and… it’s an odd duck!

Ecstatica[ecstatica.fandom.com] mostly eschewed polygons in favour of gouraud-shaded elipsoids for the characters - and for much of the background environments! In theory, this produced a much more ‘rounded’ visual style than polygons of the time could achieve.

In reality, the game looks distinctly… ‘bobbily’, kinda kid-friendly, with characters looking a lot like rounded wooden dolls. The friendly effect is enhanced by the bright primary colours used for characters and many on-screen elements.

That impression is undercut by the subject matter - this is much closer to a Berserk or Dark Souls than the graphics would lead you to believe, with a medieval village overrun by bloodthirsty monsters who’ve tortured and killed most of the inhabitants.

Of special note is the inclusion of what appears to be the first ‘stalker’ or ‘shiki’ enemy in a fixed multicam game - the Werewolf! This creature will take damage, but heals it’s own wounds and appears to be immortal… and will track and ambush you at several points during the game, growling out, “STARRRRRRRRS!”

…Alright, maybe not that last one.

I think Ecstatica is also the first fixed multicam game to feature low-health walkcycles, where you're required to determine the health of your character by how they're behaving on screen.

Unfortunately, Ecstatica doesn’t appear to be on sale today, playable only through DOSBOX and online emulators[ecstatica.fandom.com]. There’s a great wiki devoted to the game and its sequel (and the unreleased, but fascinating ‘Urban Decay’!). A shame it’s not easily available - Ecstatica remains an important milestone in the development of fixed multicam.

NON-STEAM