Outcast 1.1 rises from the ashes of Outcast Reboot HD

Outcast 1.1, an “enhanced” version of the original 1999 free-roaming voxel-based action game, is launching on Steam today. Fresh3D originally purchased the rights to Outcast from Atari in 2013 and had hoped to raise enough Kickstarter funds to completely remake the game using modern technology. Alas, that effort failed to garner enough interest to hit the needed $600K goal, but the developers didn’t give up. Instead off shuffling off with their license, they’ve pared down their vision to a more modest project.

The main improvements compared to the original version are: multithreaded voxel renderer for higher performances, software bilinear filtering on polygonal meshes, part of the HUD redesigned to match higher resolutions, new high-resolution sky paintings, new launcher, native support of Xbox gamepad, user-friendly controller configuration, a lot of bugs fixed and improved stability.

Fresh3D includes members of the original Outcast development team back when it was Appeal. If voxels and non-linear gameplay on alien worlds isn’t enough to get you excited, check out the name of the player character: Cutter Slade. That’s almost as good as Max Steel or Jet Brody.

Update: Outcast 1.1 is also available on GOG.com as well. Thanks to “flang” for the heads-up!