FROMAGE

 

Developers: Asiekierka & Iamgreaser

Release Date: June, 2019

Last Update:  March, 2024

Graphics: 3D

Version: 0.94 

Genre: Sandbox

Description

Fromage is a sandbox game engine for the PSX inspired by the classic 2009 release of Minecraft, developed between 2017 and 2019. 

Extra info

Fromage is an open-world sandbox game focused on exploration, creativity, and player-driven interaction. Players can freely traverse procedurally generated worlds, place and remove blocks, and shape the environment to build structures or experiment with terrain. Gameplay emphasizes discovery and freedom, allowing players to create their own goals through building, exploration, and interaction with the world. The experience is deliberately minimalistic, encouraging experimentation and imagination while showcasing how a fully 3D, block-based game can function within the technical limits of the PlayStation hardware.

Some notes of the developers:

• Q: How can I run Fromage?
• A: You're going to need either real hardware or a compatible PS1 emulator. My own testing results are provided via the compatibility list below.

 

• Q: What is the difference between the "CD image" and "PS-EXE" builds?
• A: The former contains sound and music, but only works as a full CD image. The PS-EXE build is a self-contained EXE you can load via serial cable or a similar solution, but does not have any audio.


• Q: What was Fromage written in?
• A: C, mostly! We rolled our own set of tools and libraries called "candyk" to cover everything we needed.


• Q: Is further development planned?
• A: Not sure. It was a fun project, and any future development would likely be in the direction of making this proof of concept its own, original PS1 game.

 

Known issues

Multiple community reports have highlighted persistent technical issues related to world saving, loading, and building the game across different platforms. A commonly reported problem occurs when saving and reloading a world after restarting the emulator, where chunks fail to load correctly and blocks become corrupted or replaced. While the issue is less noticeable on flat maps, it becomes particularly disruptive on more complex terrain, resulting in missing geometry, incorrect textures, plain-colored surfaces, and visible z-fighting. Testing indicates that this behavior does not occur in version 0.93, suggesting a regression in later builds, potentially linked to invalid memory reads.

Beyond gameplay-related issues, building the project from source has also proven challenging. With the original CandyK tools no longer accessible due to inactive servers, users are now required to compile the toolchain manually from source. This process exposes missing or undocumented dependencies, particularly on Linux-based systems, and raises additional complications around generating valid disc images. The required PlayStation license file does not conform to standard formats, forcing users to experiment with manual padding and alternative ISO-building tools.

Despite some success in producing bootable disc images, results vary depending on the platform. Emulators such as DuckStation appear to run these builds reliably, whereas real PlayStation hardware, often experiences freezes when entering generated worlds. These findings suggest unresolved hardware-level compatibility or memory management issues, leaving the current versions significantly more stable under emulation than on original PlayStation systems.

Media

Official Download Links

Official Website - YouTube - GitHub - OST