Tresspasser

Tresspasser (1998)

by Dreamworks Interactive, Electronic Arts
Genres:Adventure, Puzzle, Shooter
Themes:Open world, Action, Survival
Story:Trespasser is an action-adventure first-person-shooter video game released in 1998 that was billed as a "digital sequel" to the 1997 film "The Lost World: Jurassic Park". The player assumes the role of Anne, who is the sole survivor of a plane crash on InGen's "Site B" one year after the events of The Lost World. With only a single arm and limited weapons, Anne must escape the remote island by solving puzzles and evading the dangerous dinosaurs. The game is noted for the involvement of the film's director, Steven Spielberg, and actors Richard Attenborough and Minnie Driver. Trespasser's game engine was also very advanced for its time, showcasing large outdoor environments, real object physics, an advanced AI system, destructible objects, an advanced LOD (Level-of-Detail) system, and the first ever use of ragdoll physics and inverse kinematics for dynamically generated animations. The gameplay is very atmospheric with no visual HUD of any kind except for a heart-shaped tattoo on Anne's left breast to represent her health points and speaking out loud how much ammo is in each weapon. Tresspasser was one of the most highly anticipated games of the 1990's. Unfortunately, problems arose as soon as development started. The development team was newly formed with inexperienced management and artists who were unfamiliar with basic game development processes and 3D modeling. After a very welcoming and positive reception from early demos and concept art from E3 1996 and PCGamer, the team got overconfident about their skills and started putting in one of the worst forms of Feature Creep imaginable. The game was being delayed and going overbudget as new and never-before-seen experimental features were added or changed with an immobile release date set into the Fall of 1998. While the game was originally conceived as a Survival Horror title, it was turned into an Action-Adventure as the dinosaurs were incapable of doing advanced AI tactics or going near structures without getting stuck on building geometry. The dinosaur models themselves would cause severe slowdown for the PC due to the attached physics boxes to every raptor, along with the blood particle effects. (Recommended specs for Tresspasser at the time called for a 166 MHz Pentium II.) The models would constantly warp, twist, and compress in broken ways due to the animations and physics boxes attached them, making almost every creature stumble around in an incredibly drunken manner. The AI also had an advanced mood and emotion system for each of the dinosaurs where they could potentially hunt Anne or other dinosaurs depending on their mood. It was the earliest time a 3D game tried to create a living world using AI and emergent gameplay. Due to a bug where the AI switched so quickly in the extremes, it caused the dinosaurs to stop moving or responding altogether. A hard-coded fix was put in place where the aggression and hunger levels were set to maximum while all other moods and emotions were set to zero, turning almost all the creatures into mindless hunters. Due to an oversight, only very few raptors in the game (mostly in the Industrial Jungle level) had this emotion system still turned on. The raptors would go up to Anne to follow and sniff her curiously, until they were injured in some way. Tresspasser also conceived a "very immersive" arm system where players could interact with the world through their mouse and keyboard to inspect and look at objects close up. Anne only has a right arm to interact with the world that's capable of being manually turned in 360 degree movements that are impossible to do in real life. While it can pick up and hold objects, Anne be constantly dropping objects she's holding in her hand when bumping into structures, invisible boundaries, and dinosaurs. A left arm was scraped due to time and technical issues. Other similarly weird visual bugs, severe slowdowns, and crashes are a constant feature. Tresspasser had to be pushed out in a very unfinished and unpolished state with a lot of features, content, and several levels cut\merged. Some of which are still found within the game's files. It ultimately received mixed to negative reviews at the time and disappointed many reviewers, with some declaring Tresspasser as "the worst game of 1998". It ultimately sold somewhat over 50,000 copies with the CD-ROM being very rare today. Even with the negative reception, Tresspasser still has an active cult following to this day with various fixes, mods, and several potential remakes on modern engines. The game was the main inspiration of Valve's Half-Life series and many of Tresspasser's other ideas would later realized in other future games.Show more
user avatarAdded by @mrchlorophyll
Vote to bring this game to GOG and help preserve it.
306
Trailers and screenshots
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot
Stories about this game (6)
What’s your memory of Tresspasser?Share your favorite moments and see what others remember about this game.
user avatar@placeholder

Make sure to follow our Guidelines when adding new Stories.

If not sure what to write:
  • What made this game unforgettable?
  • Who did you play this game with?
  • What made it fun or challenging?
  • Why do you want this game on GOG?
user avatar@serinitismuser avatar@serinitism
January 29, 2025
Duplicate, another entry has 3500 votes I loved the game though, it was revolutionary, and my first tattoo! Sometimes you need to add a story about a monkey in a barrel in order to have enough words
user avatar@rusuckuser avatar@rusuck
March 21, 2025
It's a unique Game which was ahead of its time (physics, animations etc.) we never have seen again and it's part of my childhood. Time to bring this classic to new players and nostalgia for older players.
A game so ahead of its time. Launched unfinished and broken but I played the heck out of it! I complete re-do of this game would be amazing. Maybe nightdive can do it!
user avatar@oldmartyuser avatar@oldmarty
July 09, 2025
I played this all the way through so many times. It is widely paned but I always loved it and think it's truly a landmark achievement. There are remasters out there that let you go back in but I would love to see a proper update from GOG!
user avatar@schM0ggiuser avatar@schM0ggi
July 09, 2025
While seen by some people as a technical "accident", it was way ahead of its time and a great game overall, even though it didn't ship with what was originally planned (with great ambition) by the devs back then. Yes, it has its quirks but, even today, it delivers an authentic Jurassic Park atmosphere like no other, especially with its audio design (comments from your character, the subtle music etc.). You truly feel like being stranded alone on this island, trying to survive with every weapon and bullet you have, with terrific dinosaurs which want to eat you alive. Please, I want to see this game being preserved and brought back to life!
I dont know why medal of honor warfighter has more votes than this but it cant be a good sign. Please let be blast a dinosaur straight back to hell instead of a brown person.
Those games also need your vote!
Digimon World
Digimon WorldDigimon world is a game that allows a player to raise their own Digimon and teach it to battle.
Our Pick
Top
Fantasy
Science fiction
Our Pick
Top
Fantasy
Science fiction
107 063
1650
Black & White
Black & WhitePlay the role of a deity in a land where the surroundings are yours to shape and its people are yours to lord over. Be an evil, malevolent god and the natives will worship you with fear in their eyes. Play as a kind, benevolent god and they will worship you with love in their hearts. Your actions decide whether you create a heaven or hell for your worshipers. Then select a creature from the land to act as your representative in the world. Raise it to gigantic proportions and teach it to do your bidding--whether the animal grows into an evil colossus of mass destruction or a kind and gentle giant is up to you. Progress through the game's rich storyline performing powerful miracles to battle other deities and become the world's supreme god.
Top
Open world
Sandbox
Top
Open world
Sandbox
106 173
370
Silent Hill 2 (Classic)
Silent Hill 2 (Classic)The second entry in the Silent Hill franchise, Silent Hill 2 is a narrative-focused third-person psychological survival horror game with emphasis on combat, exploration and puzzle-solving elements which follows James Sunderland, a man who receives a letter, seemingly sent by his three-years-deceased wife Mary, in which he is beckoned to the fog-ridden town of Silent Hill at the same time as numerous other people troubled by their past.
Our Pick
Top
Horror
Survival
Mystery
Drama
Our Pick
Top
Horror
Survival
Mystery
Drama
95 809
272
Silent Hill
Silent HillSilent Hill is the first installment in the Silent Hill series of psychological survival horror video games. Unlike earlier survival horror games that focused on protagonists with combat training, the main character Harry Mason is an average man. The gameplay consists of combat, exploration, and puzzle-solving. The controller vibration is used to indicate Harry's heartbeat and will vibrate on low health. The player must regularly enter an inventory screen to check Harry's health, use items, and equip different weapons.
Our Pick
Top
Action
Horror
Survival
Our Pick
Top
Action
Horror
Survival
94 820
409
Freelancer
FreelancerEight hundred years prior to the start of our story, bitter conflict divided all of mankind. A handful of colonists struck out on their own to begin anew - far away from the Earth and its turmoil. Several ships were launched with enough equipment and supplies to give the hundreds onboard a fighting chance - but since the area around far-off Sirius had never been surveyed, no one really knew what to expect. What they found was a new frontier of free-flowing natural resources, unexplored territories, great wonders and lurking dangers. Each ship, representing the clusters of people and their earthly place of origin, settled into different parts of the galaxy pre-selected by their ship-board computer to give them the best chance of survival. Life was hard in the beginning, but over the 800 years the different colonies prospered and expanded their territories, claiming more and more systems for their own. Survival and propagation eventually led to growth and profit as each of the colonies developed specialties and fostered commerce. As the colonies grew and time passed their connections with their roots on Earth dwindled and they lost their memories of the conflicts of the past. Soon their attention was dominated by new, more immediate conflicts. Feelings of lost ancestral connection spurred anachronism in the look of the great cities, and created a somewhat distorted image of each colony's cultural heritage. In the ever-expanding outer edge of the territories, frontier lawlessness prevailed. The Houses: Each shipboard colony that left Earth carried some memory of its origins in its name. The Liberty carried Americans, The Bretonia flew from The United Kingdom and surrounding territory, The Kusari from Asia, and the Rheinland launched with Germanic cargo. As each ship settled and colonies began to expand, they knew little about each other and their advancing development. Finally, little by little, the individual colonies found each other and began to set up trade routes to link their systems for commerce and solidarity. Today, with each colony firmly rooted in its respective corner of the galaxy, the colonies rely heavily on each other for trade and industry but also compete for resources and new territories in the Border Worlds. The colonies mandate member governments in "The New Alliance" within the Sirius sector. To control conflicts, each colony has forged alliances and treaties with others as they have grown. Competition remains fierce, however. Struggles rage for supremacy in business, commerce, resources, power and control. There can be tenuous peace between colonies' political agendas, but the grabs for holdings constantly unsettle the volatile frontier.
Our Pick
Top
Science fiction
Sandbox
Our Pick
Top
Science fiction
Sandbox
93 449
817
Black & White 2
Black & White 2In the game, the player takes the role of a god called from the void (nothingness) to help those who invoked them. However, the player is not an omnipotent style god, but rather a god who rises and falls with his believers and the player must help develop their nature according to their good or evil desires. The player also has a creature, their physical representation in the world, which takes the form of an anthropomorphic ape, lion, wolf, turtle, cow, or tiger. Its physical manifestation can grow to an immense size, and adopt a good or evil persona separate of the player's. They develop their character as the player rewards or punishes their actions. In addition to the god simulation and city-building elements introduced in the original Black & White, Black & White 2 also features elements of real-time strategy gameplay, with the addition of controllable warfare and fighting units.
Top
Action
Fantasy
Comedy
Sandbox
Top
Action
Fantasy
Comedy
Sandbox
88 116
119
Max Payne
Max PayneMax Payne is a man with nothing to lose in the violent, cold urban night. A fugitive undercover cop framed for murder, hunted by cops and the mob, Max is a man with his back against the wall, fighting a battle he cannot hope to win. Max Payne is a relentless story-driven game about a man on the edge, fighting to clear his name while struggling to uncover the truth about his slain family amongst a myriad of plot-twists and twisted thugs in the gritty bowels of New York during the century's worst blizzard. The groundbreaking original cinematic action-shooter, Max Payne introduced the concept of Bullet Time in videogames. Through its stylish slow-motion gunplay combined with a dark and twisted story, Max Payne redefined the action-shooter genre.
Top
Action
Thriller
Top
Action
Thriller
84 391
128
The Operative: No One Lives Forever
The Operative: No One Lives ForeverNo One Lives Forever is to be a fast-paced, story-driven first-person shooter that delivers over-the-top action, outrageous villains, and wry humor in the tradition of the great 1960's Bond films. You play Cate Archer an undercover operative for MI-Zero. Your mission is to arrange for the defection of a prominent East German biophysicist that goes by the name of Otto Dentz. However things go wrong when a terrorist group known as the HARM abducts Dentz during a flight to England. Assume the role of Cate Archer, an operative working for UNITY, a secret organization fighting to free the world from the clutches of H.A.R.M.. From tense subterfuge to in-your-face combat, No One Lives Forever ups the ante with 1960's-influenced spy action, vivid international locates, and deadly arch villains.
Top
Action
Comedy
Stealth
Top
Action
Comedy
Stealth
82 139
273
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VIIFinal Fantasy VII is a role-playing game set in a post-modern, steampunk world where technology and fantasy elements coexist. Players control Cloud Strife, an ex-soldier who joins the eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE to oppose Shinra Inc., a corporation draining the planet's life energy. The game features turn-based combat with an active time element, a customizable Materia system for abilities, and unique Limit Break attacks for each character. Players explore 3D environments, engage in various mini-games, and uncover a complex plot involving Cloud's mysterious past and a powerful threat to the world. As the story progresses, players gain access to different vehicles, allowing them to explore new areas and uncover additional content.
Top
Fantasy
Science fiction
Top
Fantasy
Science fiction
78 207
132
American McGee's Alice
American McGee's AliceShortly after her second adventure, Through the Looking-Glass, Alice's house is burnt down by an accidental fire, killing her family and leaving her as the only survivor. As time progresses Alice loses touch with reality. She is institutionalized in Rutledge Asylum, where she is observed and treated by Dr. Heironymous Wilson. Alice's only possession in Rutledge is a stuffed rabbit. Ten years after Alice was committed to Rutledge, she finds herself sucked back into a Wonderland that has been twisted by her own broken mind. The White Rabbit summons Alice to aid a radically altered Wonderland, which became a twisted version of itself as it came under the horrible rule of the Queen of Hearts. The Cheshire Cat serves as Alice's companion throughout the game, frequently appearing to guide her with cryptic comments.
Top
Action
Horror
Top
Action
Horror
61 812
108