Fract OSC

Fract OSC is presented to the player in the first-person view. As a nameless avatar, the player explores the game's world with little guidance besides visual and audio clues. The game begins on an empty space which, as the player discovers while playing the game, is a giant music synthesizer, initially defunct. A portal on this level leads to a game's main world space, the insides of this synthesizer.

This world is an abstract landscape, comparable to the visuals of Tron, that includes many large structures along with the unique environmental features. At any time, the player can switch to a special "engagement mode" view that reveals any special virtual controls in the nearby area that can be used to manipulate the game's world. One feature of the world are a number of travel stations, from which the player can rapidly travel to any other previously-opened station. While the player can fall into a lethal liquid at the base of the world, or be crushed by objects in the game world, they are respawned without penalty near a recent checkpoint they passed.

Fract OSC began as a student project by Richard E. Flanagan while at the University of Montreal, working on a post-graduate degree in game design. At the time, Flanagan had named the game Fract, and described it as a "boldly styled Myst-like adventure", having the player explore an abstract world, resembling Tron-like environments, that incorporated music and sound into its aesthetic. These ideas were based on his idea of combines three very personal interests, "early computer culture, adventure games and fundamentals of electronic music", and creating a mechanic that users would experience musical elements early in the game and come to understand how to use these later in the game for larger puzzles.

Though not a programmer himself, he learned the Unity engine to build out his ideas, making sure that the engine was capable of capturing the visual feel he wanted for the game while scaling back on some of the larger puzzles he had envisioned. After completing his degree, Flanagan continued to work on the game as to create a single playable level that he submitted for the Independent Games Festival Student Showcase ceremony, while providing this level as a free download for others to test garner interest if he should develop the game further.