Generally speaking, if a game frequently bounces after attracting people’s attention, then the player will have a high probability that it may have been ‘million evacuated’ after a wave of investment. Therefore, it is rare to see a game like ‘Replaced’ that repeatedly jumps between release and bounce, and uses complex luck after launch. The mirror, the art style that makes players stunned, and the immersive lens language, pulls the screen level of the independent game to a new level.
‘Replaced’ is a 2.5D movie action platform game. Players will play the role of artificial intelligence trapped in the human body, explore in the dystopian world, and start a counterattack and battle with the enemy. 85% of the Steam platform is particularly well-received and rushed to the seventh best-selling list. It all shows that the strength of this game is beyond doubt.
But for the player group, the overall experience of the game can be described as a clear distinction. Most players first affirmed the visual effort of the production team, and they all agreed to the same, and for other parts, it was finished. Whether it is the hand feel problem of the battle part, or the problem that some performance dialogues cannot be skipped, it is easy to make some players start to get tired in the middle and rear sections. Some players even said that this game reminds him of his ex, good-looking but boring.
It is worth mentioning that the three founders of Sad Cat Studios, the production team of this work, were mainly engaged in mobile game development before. This work lasted for eight years, during which several decisions were changed and the workflow was adjusted, and finally it was brought to the players.
01
Movie platform games
The story is set as an alternative to the nuclear disaster In 1984, the United States has become devastated wasteland, and Phoenix has risen as a savior. In the narrative atmosphere of the whole work, it is easy to see the shadow of ‘1984’-style power monitoring, or the metaphor of ‘the reconciler between the brain and the hand must be the heart’ in ‘The Metropolis’.
For example, when playing, players can see that R.E.A.C.H. frequently reports the current situation to Warren, which is unconscious (or no longer exists). Watching it survive while gradually understanding the concept of ‘people’, learning the experience that was not originally a machine. In one of the scenes, Warren briefly became a player from the occupied body, and R.E.A.C.H. also had a direct conversation with the player.
‘Replaced’ is the most praised in terms of picture performance, which is almost controversial. Indeed, it has indeed made a longboard at the visual level. Whether it is the scheduling of the scene in the performance, or the spatial organization of the scene itself, this pixel-style platform game has a stronger spatial expression than similar works. The most surprising thing is that it is obviously a horizontally unfolded picture, but it does not appear thin. Through the lighting and occlusion of the foreground, medium and long-range partitions to increase the sense of plane depth, with the proximity and distance on the lens, and the emotional changes in the depth of field processing, many scenes present a close-to-movie viewing method.
The advantages of video games are exactly here. Virtual lenses can simulate propulsion, scaling, and switching angles like realistic machines, but do not have to really be subject to the actual shooting conditions. Therefore, in the game, you can express the scenes that cannot be realized in ordinary movies, so as to give players an interesting visual performance. The result is that it looks like a horizontal version of the pixel on the surface, but it has a movie-like picture.
The current pixel style is no longer an alternative to the limitation of technology. More often, it is a visual expression of this limited resolution that actively chooses this limited resolution under the premise of sufficient graphics ability. Sad Cat Studios chose this style, on the one hand, mentioned in the interview, thinking that it has the temperament of an independent game, and on the other hand, it also takes a fancy to the emotional resonance that the texture itself can bring. The background in this work, especially the station scene is full of environmental information, and some scenes will also use the mix of 2D and 3D elements. This kind of processing is generally easy to be abrupt in other works, but it is quite natural in this work.
An example is the on-board terminal equipment in the game, through which the player can browse the collection information and the current task at any time. This part was originally just a common functional design, but Replaced did not handle it into a simple pop-up menu. When the protagonist views the information, the camera closes the action of the thumb scrolling side scroller closer to the thumb, and through the dynamic switching of the perspective, the player’s operation seems to have become one of the components of the picture reflected in the game. When the scene is switched, it is vaguely, and there is even the effect of using the horizontal structure to get close to the end of the mirror.
Compared with the picture expression of the game, in terms of combat, it is indeed a bit lackluster. The battle uses a system similar to the Batman: Arkham series. A prompt will appear on the top of the enemy’s head to tell the player when to block or dodge. The production team also strengthens the feedback sense of each block, struck and execution by shaking and changing the light of the hand-held lens. In order to preserve the special animation tension, they did not completely turn to pure 3D animation, but insist on using frame-by-frame animation.
Response can occasionally appear a little dull. The production team said that this was intentional. In order to make the protagonist’s movements both real and ‘weight’, it reflects the clumsy feeling of artificial intelligence when it first entered the human body. This statement seems reasonable in the setting, but it does not convince the player group.
Finally, let’s talk about the world view of the game. In the ‘Replaced’ game, human organs can be replaced. It seems that they are unconsciously connected to the ship of Theseuss. When the body is replaced little by little, it turns out that the person is still there. The production team publicly talked about two topics they would like to discuss in the game, one is that everything is based on bioengineering and organ transplantation. In this society, if artificial intelligence becomes a living individual, rather than a supercomputer that understands human nature, what will it do? The other theme is, if you start giving up your freedom bit by bit for a better life, what happens?
02
A journey from a small room
The development process of this work is the same as the temperament of its story. The project went through almost 8 years in total. It announced the work at the E3 exhibition in 2021 and is scheduled to be released in 2022, but it has gone through several consecutive years of extension. In 2022, the occurrence of the war led to a severe impact on the development, and some members moved, and the development had to slow down. With many events such as delays and studio relocation, many players have acquiesced in it that it will continue to disappear and become another project that only exists in the trailer’s memory, but I didn’t expect it to survive.
In a later interview, the production team said that the earliest direction of the project is not exactly the same as it is now. Game director Yura Zhdanovich has said that their first version was originally a classic platform game like ‘Flashback’ or ‘Another World’. The project was first established in 2018, and the production team brought it to the exhibition in 2019 to provide a prototype demo, and it turned out that it did not meet their expectations. Although there are many players who come to try it out, most of them leave after half the game, and they are still very frustrated by this.
They gradually realized that such a structure alone is not enough to support their expectations for this game. Since then, the project has been repeatedly revised and reorganized for a long time. It was also at this stage that the team began to gradually put works such as ‘Inside’, ‘Uncharted’ and ‘Batman: Arkham’ into their own reference, trying to expand the rhythm of traditional platform games into a more complete ‘playable movie’ experience.
Among them, the gameplay is largely inspired by the movie ‘Upgrade’, and the film’s interpretation of the battle scenes impressed them deeply. At the same time, film works like ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Blade Runner 2049’ are also affecting the aesthetic concept of the production team for this game. One of the original sources of inspiration for Replaced’s 2.5D style is a game ‘The Last’ that was announced more than ten years ago but has not yet been released. NIGHT, Gritsay calls it the pioneer of this revival 3D style art, and Replaced is also regarded as a spiritual sequel to the game that is also too late to play.
For players, the art level is the easiest place to remember, and for the development team, this is also the most time-consuming place. Igor Gritsay said in a 2025 interview that the team originally thought that this would be more realistic than doing a full AAA level three-dimensional performance, but it was not easy to actually advance. In the earliest days, the production team used Unity for development, and soon they realized that if they wanted to achieve the visual effect they had conceived, they had to choose other solutions. So they tried many solutions, and finally spent a lot of time and energy to develop a customized system for subsequent development. But it’s worth it for them, and the complex lights, shadows and particle effects seen in the game are all benefited from this system.
Igor Gritsay recalled in the interview that at the beginning of the team’s establishment, there were only three people huddled in a small room to work. At that time, they had a common and clear desire to get rid of the creative limitations of making mobile games in the past, and instead try more complex and risky works. Looking back now, ‘Replaced’ has been repeatedly postponed, revised and reconstructed over the years, and the various setbacks and accidents experienced during this period have not forced them to give up.
‘I think the core theme of our game is ‘what is’,’ Gritsay said.
Epilogue
‘Replaced’ took many years, and in the postponement again and again, finally came out of the ambition of a few people crowded in a small room. For them, this is a long and distant road, and it is also an attempt to touch a more dangerous but more charming border. People may always insist on some seemingly unnecessary things in the limit. For a world that has not yet been formed, it may not even prove ‘valuable’, and they are still willing to continue to invest time, patience and courage. That narrow room back then became a dream with a little warmth that all players can enter.
原创文章，作者：gallonwang，禁止转载：https://youxichaguan.com/en/archives/193706
