// KOTAKU — GAMING
My Favorite Game At Summer Game Fest Wasn’t On Geoff Keighley’s Stage
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
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.
ScreenBound is the first 5D platformer You control a character in first person view and in 2-D view on your little game device. At the same time! #Game #GameBoy #GameBoyAdvance #Game #GamerGirl #ForYouPage #FYP
“[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 t