One of the most interesting things I played at Summer Game Fest this year was Crescent Moon Games’ Screenbound, a “5D” platformer that combines a first-person 3D space with a 2D sidescrolling one, requiring you to navigate both simultaneously in order to progress. It’s a concept so compelling, even folks who haven’t played the game have been drawn in by it, with clips of Screenbound popping off on social media since it was first revealed in 2024.
It’s a novel idea that’s difficult to describe with words but easy to understand when you see it in motion. In fact, clips of Screenbound’s blend of first-person traversal and 2D sidescrolling have accumulated millions of views across social media platforms like TikTok and X because it’s such a compelling visual gimmick.
Imagine you’re running through a platforming level and notice that you can’t find a handhold to latch onto or a door to walk through. For a moment, you might think the game has glitched, or that you’re going the wrong way, but in Screenbound, what’s in front of you is only half the picture. You also carry with you a Game Boy–like handheld that shows the world from a different, 2D perspective, and looking there, you might see a way forward that isn’t otherwise visible to you. An example I came across in the demo was a balloon hovering above a chasm that appeared only on the 2D screen, but if I jumped up, held my breath, and believed that what I was seeing on the device was actually in front of me, I’d find the balloon’s string hanging low enough for me to grab onto and float safely across the treacherous gap.
These 3 indie devs are working on a game in which you play in 3D and 2D… at the same time
This looks insane lol pic.twitter.com/nmWRagC1W2
— Jake Lucky (@JakeSucky) March 26, 2024
Even when you do understand it, there’s still a challenge in having to look back and forth from the 3D world in front of you to the 2D one on the Game Boy-like handheld you carry around with you. Sometimes you can only see certain solutions or obstacles in one dimension, so if you’re stuck in the 3D space, your 2D handheld might show you something you can’t see, or vice versa.
Game director Josh Presseisen tells Kotaku that Screenbound started as a series of prototypes that blended 2D and 3D elements, but not quite in the same way the final game does. It wasn’t until he thought about how a handheld device could act as a second-screen experience that the idea of using a fictional video game device to add another layer of navigation came about.
“I had been playing around with a lot of different game prototypes, some of which had some blended gameplay with 2D and 3D elements,” Presseisen says. “For instance, a game that was a sidescrolling 2.5 platformer, but then when you reached a certain point, you would get into [a] ship and fly around in third-person moving away from the camera (similar to Star Fox). Some of the ideas got some traction but not a lot. I randomly saw a picture of someone playing a handheld device and it triggered the idea in my head of Screenbound – where the 2D screen was somehow linked to the 3D world in the game. I posted the concept and it got a lot of interest right away.”
The fact that every level has to be visually communicated both in 2D and 3D means that the moments of discovery come from players seeing how one action can translate across both visual styles. They then have to be cognizant of both while moving through the world in case certain solutions or obstacles are only visible on one or the other.
“[The moment where it all clicked] was probably the moment that has been talked about the most when you are riding on a balloon in 2D, but your character in the 3D first-person view can travel in any direction in the air – it is just a unique feeling. To me it’s still the most interesting part of the game and it has a strange feeling that you probably have not experienced in another game,” Presseisen says. “Looking around the 3D world while your 2D character stands in place is also an interesting feeling. Beyond those first unique ideas, turning this into an entire game has been a challenge, to even conceive how the world works, how it’s connected, and what is possible within that framework.”
According to Presseisen, designing a game in which both a 2D and 3D world are rendered and moved through simultaneously essentially requires making two games at once, which is no small technical feat and has required co-developing the game alongside Southfield maker Radical Forge, using a level editor the team created from the ground up that helps streamline the process of making the same level twice in two different dimensions.
“When creating a game like this, you are essentially creating a lot of rules that have to apply to how the different dimensions connect to each other,” Presseisen says. “On top of that, you are creating two separate games, in a way. We need to build artwork for most of the game in 3D and in 2D, with the pixel art and 3D models. It’s a huge technical hurdle building the world, but to simplify that aspect as much as possible, we’ve created a level editor from the ground up (not using AI) that allows you to draw the game in a 2D tile editor, simplifying the creation of levels.”
He continues, “It generates the placement of the terrain through the location of the 2D tiles, and the prefab objects that sit on top of it. Then we can add some extra bits—3D details—after the fact with custom prefabs. It’s a long process. This is one of the magical inner workings of Screenbound and one of its unique attributes. I’m very happy with how the game’s world turned out.”
Presseisen shouts out the team at Radical Forge for helping realize Screenbound’s multi-dimensional setup, saying Crescent Moon Games “would not be where we are now without them.”
While the concept of a game that is simultaneously a 3D platformer and a 2D sidescroller sounds ambitious on its own, Screenbound apparently has more gameplay-merging ideas Crescent Moon hasn’t shown off yet, as the player will find another cartridge for their not–Game Boy that will change things up again as you progress.
“It’s been a bit hush-hush as it’s been worked on behind the scenes for quite awhile,” Presseisen says. “The idea is that when you complete the first cartridge you are given access to another one which is an entirely different style of gameplay–a nod to early adventure games on home console systems. Without going into too much detail, or revealing too much, this world that you adventure around in will give you access to different weapons and tools that you would see in those retro games. It adds another dimension in Screenbound – a top-down view. Similar to retro RPGs you might have played.”
Screenbound is coming to PC, Xbox, and PS5 on September 10, but you can play a bit of it now thanks to a demo on Steam.
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