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Code Britannia is an ongoing series of interviews with seminal British games designers, looking back over their careers and the changing face of gaming.One of the great things about being there for the start of a new creative medium is that it arrives as a completely blank canvas, where every idea can become the first of its kind. That was certainly true of the brief but brilliant games career of art school graduate Sandy White, who was creating persistent worlds on the ZX Spectrum using his SoftSolid 3D process while today's superstar designers were still in short trousers. Sandy is best known for Ant Attack, an astonishing work of eerie minimalist panic in which you guide your hero - or heroine - to rescue people from the insect-infested city of Antescher.
Arguably the first fully explorable solid 3D world in gaming, Antescher felt like a real place. You could rotate your view, disappear behind structures and navigate by recognisable landmarks. The city itself became a gameplay feature. Ant Attack remains a great game today, but by the standards of 1983, when it was first released, it was absolutely groundbreaking.
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