If you so much as flicked through a PC gaming magazine in the mid ’90s, you’ll probably recognise the name Ecstatica. Created by Londoner Andrew Spencer and published by Psygnosis, the series spawned two instalments: the first released in 1994 and is a medieval-themed survival horror. The second arrived in 1997, and while it’s very distinctly an Ecstatica game by dint of its art style, it dialed back the horror elements quite a bit.
That art style is pretty crucial: instead of polygonal character models, Ecstatica’s engine used ellipsoids, which are, well, roundish. Bulbous even. Rather than paraphrase the formula-ridden Wikipedia page for ellipsoids, it’s probably easier just to show you this:
It’s a pretty distinctive art style, and famously, Andrew Spencer wrote the engine himself from scratch. The ellipsoids are real as well: other games that have a similar art style, like Little Big Adventure for instance, implement Gouraud shading to create the effect of softness where there’s actually a hard angle.
As Spencer told Next Generation in 1996: “The main advantage is the organic-looking characters. Triangles tend to make hard, robotic-looking figures, whereas ellipsoids can be used to create more rounded, human alternatives. Ellipsoids can also be more efficient because you can make a much better looking character out of fewer shapes.”