Semblance

The world’s first true plat-former

Semblance asks, what if you could deform and reshape the world itself? It’s a game that takes the idea of a ‘platform’ in a platformer and turns it on it’s head.

Semblance is a puzzle platformer where your character and the world it inhabits is made of playdough. Squish, squash, and deform your character and the world to solve puzzles in Semblance’s soft, bouncy world. The world of our character, Squish, is usually entirely soft - but an infection and infestation of hard material has started to spread, feeding off the playdough world to survive. A guardian of the world gives it’s own life to give life to a very piece of the world - creating Squish. Squish must collect the very essences of their world to bring the soft world back to life.

If you think games have tapped everything the medium can accomplish, you may want to watch the trailer for Semblance

Marshall Lemon, VG247

an inventive puzzle/platformer… [with] clever physics dynamics

Matt Miller

a beautiful game, with a colorful, cartoony aesthetic

Alex Newhouse, Gamespot

a wonderful sense of freedom

Chloi Rad, IGN

Gallery

Semblance is one adorable puzzle platformer

Rich Meister, Destructoid

Extras

Listen to the soundtrack on Bandcamp and Spotify

Final Thoughts

Semblance started as our final year university project at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2015. After a suggestion by an experienced AAA game developer, we decided to make the game into a full release. We’ve been working on the game ever since – exploring first the consequences of a deformable character, and more recently, a moldable world.

Features:

A unique playdough world to mold and deform to your will.
A soft and squishy character to help squeeze into tight spots, and interact with the world in different ways.
Gorgeous, yet simple art style.
Challenging puzzles for players to solve.
Engaging, yet minimalist story.

South African game developers, Nyamakop released Semblance in 2018. Semblance is a postmodern riff on the genre of ‘platformers’. The work takes the fundamental assumption of a ‘platform’ in the genre and turns it on its head. What if platforms were part of the gameplay, part of the way a player solved problems?

Semblance showed all over the world in 2017, ranging from large commercial shows such as PAX East; Gamescom; E3; and EGX to smaller, prestigious events like Slamdance; A MAZE.; and Stugan. The game received coverage everywhere from IGN and Gamespot to Rolling Stone and the Mail & Guardian. Game Informer even named Semblance one of its ‘best indie games of E3 2017’.

Semblance launched on July 24th 2018, on PC, Mac and Nintendo Switch. It is currently ranked in the top 100 best PC games of 2018 according to Metacritic.