GDC was an eventual five whole days of nothing but video games and sometimes it feels like I’m still recovering. As we were gearing up for the week a special surprise hit our inboxes and Xbox was kind enough to invite us to their own preview event in San Francisco to play several “ID@Xbox” demos. One of those games I got to play was Screenbound, a neat platformer that had me multitasking like I never had before.
The demo began in a forest-looking level in a first-person perspective while holding a handheld that looked like a Game Boy. As I walked around, I could jump and climb onto ledges and ladders. At the same time, the handheld I was carrying also had a little version of me that moved when I moved, meaning I had full control of what was going on my second screen. It took a while to get used to having all these dimensions to control, but I got the hang of it rather quickly.
Just look at those sweet, blissful pixels.
What was different about this, however, was that it showed things that weren’t in front of me. I’d get stuck somewhere in the “3D” world, but in my “2D” handheld, there was a ladder that helped me traverse the area, which gave me one of those “ah-ha” moments when you finally figure out how a game works. One of the representatives working the booth mentioned that the developers had to create the game on paper to map out how to play it, using the X and Y-Axis — many hours of very confusing game design that I don’t wish to think about must have gone into this one demo alone.
A lot of the appeal of this game to me was the back and forth between 3D and 2D worlds. In order to progress, you have to traverse through and avoid or kill enemies in your way. As someone who loves Mega Man and recently beat X1 for the first time in decades, the pixel platforming portions were my favorite part of the demo. These levels seem heavily inspired by these old pixel games just by the way they play. At one point, you have to jump up and grab onto a balloon, and, depending on whether you had a good running start, it would carry you across a bunch of enemies, or you could take them out.
My only issue with my time with this demo wasn’t really with the demo itself, but more so what I played it on. I played this on a ROG Xbox Ally, which felt great to hold, but after a while it felt too heavy. I’m also the type of person who unintentionally faces my entire head down when looking at a screen at a lower angle and forgets to adjust to reduce neck pain.
2D objects on screen are larger than they appear in 3D.
The 3D sections of the game were fun, and it was a clever way to incorporate the 2D world of the handheld to help you progress, but the “it’s a me problem” resurfaced, where oftentimes first-person gameplay makes my head hurt if the camera is too fast or the FOV is too zoomed in. For accessibility purposes, I’d have to mess with the settings instead of taking this game for a spin immediately out of the box.
This did come at a bit of a cost for my time playing the demo, but I genuinely enjoyed my experience overall with the game itself. I think the design is something really innovative that I don’t think we’ve seen before and it’s awesome to see that the creators just want to pay homage to the retro games of yesteryear. With so many games utilizing the “2D/3D”, Screenbound takes the things a lot of us old heads love about video games, a retro pixel art style, and uses it to help the modern 3D world that we know video games to be today.
I can’t wait to get more into this world and wish this game nothing but the best when it releases. Sadly, there is no public demo and we don’t have much info on when the game comes out other than sometime later this year. The good news: You can still wishlist Screenbound for Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S today.
GDC was an eventual five whole days of nothing but video games and sometimes it feels like I’m still recovering. As we were gearing up for the week a special surprise hit our inboxes and Xbox was kind enough to invite us to their own preview event in San Francisco to play several “ID@Xbox” demos. One of those games I got to play was Screenbound, a neat platformer that had me multitasking like I never had before.
GDC was an eventual five whole days of nothing but video games and sometimes it feels like I’m still recovering. As we were gearing up for the week a special surprise hit our inboxes and Xbox was kind enough to invite us to their own preview event in San Francisco to play several “ID@Xbox” demos. One of those games I got to play was Screenbound, a neat platformer that had me multitasking like I never had before.
The demo began in a forest-looking level in a first-person perspective while holding a handheld that looked like a Game Boy. As I walked around, I could jump and climb onto ledges and ladders. At the same time, the handheld I was carrying also had a little version of me that moved when I moved, meaning I had full control of what was going on my second screen. It took a while to get used to having all these dimensions to control, but I got the hang of it rather quickly.
Just look at those sweet, blissful pixels.
What was different about this, however, was that it showed things that weren’t in front of me. I’d get stuck somewhere in the “3D” world, but in my “2D” handheld, there was a ladder that helped me traverse the area, which gave me one of those “ah-ha” moments when you finally figure out how a game works. One of the representatives working the booth mentioned that the developers had to create the game on paper to map out how to play it, using the X and Y-Axis — many hours of very confusing game design that I don’t wish to think about must have gone into this one demo alone.
A lot of the appeal of this game to me was the back and forth between 3D and 2D worlds. In order to progress, you have to traverse through and avoid or kill enemies in your way. As someone who loves Mega Man and recently beat X1 for the first time in decades, the pixel platforming portions were my favorite part of the demo. These levels seem heavily inspired by these old pixel games just by the way they play. At one point, you have to jump up and grab onto a balloon, and, depending on whether you had a good running start, it would carry you across a bunch of enemies, or you could take them out.
My only issue with my time with this demo wasn’t really with the demo itself, but more so what I played it on. I played this on a ROG Xbox Ally, which felt great to hold, but after a while it felt too heavy. I’m also the type of person who unintentionally faces my entire head down when looking at a screen at a lower angle and forgets to adjust to reduce neck pain.
2D objects on screen are larger than they appear in 3D.
The 3D sections of the game were fun, and it was a clever way to incorporate the 2D world of the handheld to help you progress, but the “it’s a me problem” resurfaced, where oftentimes first-person gameplay makes my head hurt if the camera is too fast or the FOV is too zoomed in. For accessibility purposes, I’d have to mess with the settings instead of taking this game for a spin immediately out of the box.
This did come at a bit of a cost for my time playing the demo, but I genuinely enjoyed my experience overall with the game itself. I think the design is something really innovative that I don’t think we’ve seen before and it’s awesome to see that the creators just want to pay homage to the retro games of yesteryear. With so many games utilizing the “2D/3D”, Screenbound takes the things a lot of us old heads love about video games, a retro pixel art style, and uses it to help the modern 3D world that we know video games to be today.
I can’t wait to get more into this world and wish this game nothing but the best when it releases. Sadly, there is no public demo and we don’t have much info on when the game comes out other than sometime later this year. The good news: You can still wishlist Screenbound for Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S today.
by Adriana Rodriguez
