You're an 8-bit character adrift in a 3D world dissolving under its own weight.
Metroidvania · In development · Berlin
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Wishlist on Steam
You're an 8-bit character adrift in a 3D world dissolving under its own weight.
Metroidvania · In development · Berlin
You don't belong here — but somehow it works.
In this metroidvania adventure, explore unknown realms after leaving the comfort of your own familiar game. Be the very definition of what works even when it's not supposed to, as you uncover one piece after another. It's a bit like reverse-engineering a game you want to explore from every angle — differently each time.
Premise
You don't belong here. Nothing about you fits — not your flat little body, not the way you move, not the rules you grew up with. The reality you've fallen into is coming apart at the seams anyway: textures dissolve, geometry fractures, the world itself glitches. It's a visual language for what it feels like not to belong, and to have to figure yourself out anyway.
That tension — belonging through not belonging — is the emotional core of the game: growing up, and finding yourself dropped into a reality you were never quite comfortable with, and having to adapt anyway.
Moves
Run
Double jump
Dash
Throw
Spin
FlipUnique selling points
Losing health degrades your resolution
Enemies lose their geometry
Your hitbox slips loose from your sprite
LODs, hitboxes, UVs, wireframes — the language of making games becomes the language of playing this one.
Core gameplay
A side-scrolling path through handcrafted 3D environments — cave, workshop, factory, temple and more — built with hidden routes, collectibles and people to meet. Progress is gated behind new abilities and art styles, so you're pulled back and forth across the map as the world opens up.
Real-time and hitbox-driven. Damage isn't cosmetic: enemies visibly degrade as you hit them, dropping detail and moving more erratically, and you do the same as your health drops. The more the world hurts you, the less whole you look.
About two and a half hours, no padding, designed to be explored again — faster and deeper each time. The people you meet speak in warped rendering jargon, turning the language of game development into the voice of the world talking back at you.
Screenshots
Play it
Playtests run through Steam. Write to us or say hello in the Discord and we'll put you on the list.
Request access Join the Discord
“Nothing in the first few minutes prepares players for what's really waiting for them.” Markus Riexinger, nd — translated from German
“Who knew a Steam playtest would make me want to reevaluate my entire life?” Dwayne Jenkins, Glizzy
The design is phenomenal and kept my curiosity going. Eliad K., playtester
Ironically cohesive despite the mishmash of styles — a Portal vibe, where nothing is as it seems. Shuo Z., playtester
The studio
An indie studio in Berlin, founded by Daniel Sgan-Cohen — 3D artist, game artist, animator and illustrator, BA (Hons.) Game Arts & Animation, SAE Institute Berlin. You Don't Belong Here began as his bachelor project and is now the studio's first title, with the team growing around it — modestly, and on purpose.
The game comes out of his own experience of leaving home and finding his footing in an unfamiliar culture.
What exists today is the fundamentals. The demo is a complete short run through the world: the core loop, the style shifting, the combat, the first abilities. It is not the finished game we're aiming at.
From here the work is expansion — more levels and routes built around their own art styles, deeper abilities and combat that play with the game's own machinery, a richer script and world, and the polish pass. That's what we're raising funding for.
Press & business