Darwin’s Paradox is an Unreal Engine 5 platformer turning an octopus into a Pixar-style hero

Darwin's Paradox wants to be something a little different: a game inspired by PS1 classics, with a touch of Abe's Oddysee and a bit of Metal Gear Solid, all wrapped in an Unreal Engine 5-made, Pixar-like animated spectacle.

But let's have some context: the octopus is a marine species that isn't a complete stranger to games, though it's fair to say that their representations have often been quite unusual, be it Octodad, an octopus disguising itself as a suburban father, or the more anthropomorphised, such as Splatoon's Octolings. More often than not, these eight-limbed cephalopods also have more antagonistic associations, such as the carnivorous Ultros in the Final Fantasy series or Lovecraftian cosmic entity Cthulhu.

That the titular protagonist of Darwin's Paradox (named after a real scientific concept describing how coral reefs thrive in barren environments) very much resembles and behaves like a real octopus is then in itself a novelty, but also the foundation for ZDT Studio's debut game.

"The concept started with a general awareness of what octopuses could do - climb, camouflage, use ink - but the further we went, the more we discovered," the studio's art director Mikael Tanguy tells me. "We kept reading about these increasingly incredible scientific facts and real stories about octopus behaviour - things that were almost too extraordinary to believe - and every single one of them correlated with what we'd already started building, while making it richer."

The French indie studio was formed in 2022, its founders consisting of veterans with backgrounds not just in games, including a former director of Arkane Lyon behind the critically acclaimed Dishonored and Deathloop, but also in animation and visual effects.

But even while spending almost two decades in the world of cinema VFX, including work on Cannes Jury Prize winning Bacurau, Tanguy says he's dreamed of the concept of "a platformer video game of a small, lost octopus navigating an industrial world with nothing but its natural instincts" for more than 10 years. "Beyond the visual and narrative appeal, octopuses are just extraordinary creatures: intelligent, mysterious, expressive. They can be funny, eerie, and endearing all at once. That tonal range was everything for us."

Inspired by a PS1 cult classic

It's a markedly different tone to some of the most accomplished examples of the modern cinematic platformer that skew dark, dystopian, and outright nightmarish, such as Inside, Little Nightmares, or Reanimal. "Darwin's world is cold and dangerous, yes, but Darwin himself is warm and funny," Tanguy explains. "That contrast is intentional and, we think, what makes the game feel fresh."

Citing older examples of the genre, including PS1 cult classic Abe's Odyssey, comedy was always an important ingredient, in particular emulating the wackiness of classic Looney Tunes cartoons, in particular Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. "We have a very specific love for that beautiful absurdity where failure is spectacular and the world bounces back," he adds. "When Darwin gets caught, it's not grim - it’s a balloon pop. It’s a cartoon moment. The comedy is also what makes Darwin's Paradox feel inviting, accessible. It tells the player: failing is okay, try again, this is fun."

As a vulnerable creature that has to use his natural abilities to survive, this create both tension and humour in what you see and interact with. "When Darwin camouflages, his whole body language changes - tentacles curl, colours shift - it's a character moment as much as a mechanic. The inability to fight back makes every successful infiltration feel genuinely clever, genuinely earned."

A little bit of Pixar

Of course, the visual direction is less a Looney Tunes cartoon and more on par with a big-budget computer animation. Starting with Darwin in his natural habitat, the ocean, before being suddenly captured and transported to a hostile industrial environment, may even bring to mind Pixar's literal fish-out-of-water masterpiece, Finding Nemo.

The team was able to replicate this style with the power of Unreal Engine 5, a natural transition from Tanguy's experience in cinema VFX that was transformative. "The real-world values, colour temperatures, Lumen's global illumination - it all mapped onto how I already thought about lighting in production, but the immediate real-time feedback on the final image was genuinely transformative," he says.

"In film, you render overnight and see the result the next morning in most cases. In Unreal, you change a light and it updates in front of you and you can render realtime animations on the go. The final quality gap between movies and video games is reducing day by day. Once you've experienced that, you don't want to go back."

The biggest difference to adjust to, however, is producing those same visual results without compromising on the game's real-time performance. "In animation, if a shot has forty translucency layers, it renders in an hour. In a real-time game at 60FPS on PS5, that's a crisis. Learning to achieve the same visual intention within those constraints was the real challenge, and ultimately, a rewarding one."

One important point was that when the game cuts away from the 2.5D gameplay to a cutscene with close-ups and more dynamic camera work, it's also animated in real time rather than using pre-rendered sequences.

"One of our core goals was to create seamless transitions between gameplay and cinematics," Tanguy explains, "When you cut to a pre-rendered sequence, you immediately break the illusion. The player sees the seam. We wanted Darwin's world to feel continuous at the maximum, like you're inhabiting a living animated film, not watching clips between levels."

Making use of Unreal Engine 5

Critical to maintaining consistency between cinematics and gameplay was Lumen, Unreal Engine 5's advanced dynamic global illumination and reflections system, applied to the same assets, shaders, and camera. "The cinematics are shot with the same cinematic lens approach we bring to the gameplay camera - depth of field, natural imperfections, colour grading. It's all one continuous visual language."

Of all Unreal 5's tools, Lumen is by far the most important to Tanguy. "Dynamic global illumination changed everything for our workflow. I could light a scene with real-world values and see the result immediately. We iterated on environments in hours instead of days. And the visual quality - especially in the underwater sections, where light behaviour is complex and beautiful - would have been extremely difficult to achieve through traditional baking."

He nonetheless highlights the engine's material and post-processing systems as invaluable in creating a cinematic effect, as if the visuals were shot with a real camera, using lens distortions, depth of field, colour grading, and chromatic aberration.

It means that Darwin's Paradox has some rather demanding minimum specs, skipping last-gen platforms, including a scrapped Switch 1 port. Tanguy argues that the decision was made so as to not compromise the game's visual identity. "It's functional, not decorative," he says.

"The out-of-focus backgrounds, the cinematic lens behaviour, the real-time global illumination from Lumen, the post-processing layers - these aren't things we could strip away and still have the same game. They're the language through which the world communicates with the player. If Darwin's camouflage doesn't look right, the mechanic loses its magic. If the lighting doesn't create the right mood, the tension evaporates."

The team has nonetheless worked hard to optimise the game, ensuring it can hit 60FPS performance mode for PS5 and PC, while the Switch 2 version targets 30FPS. "Getting there while preserving the visual intent was one of our biggest challenges. The minimum specs reflect where we landed - the floor below which the experience we designed stops being the experience we designed."

There's a touch of Metal Gear Solid, too

Given the stealth-based mechanics involved, including the ability to camouflage, there are some obvious parallels with the game's publisher, Konami and its stealth series, Metal Gear Solid. Both developer and publisher leaned on this theme with a free demo (subtitled Tactical Octopus Action) that, while taken from a level in the final game, has been modified with familiar elements like sneaking around in a cardboard box, the iconic alert sound effect, and even a moment when Darwin is on a codec call with another cephalopod.

"Artistically, the challenge was blending Darwin’s cartoon, organic style with Metal Gear’s tactical, cinematic world without losing either identity," Tanguy says of the collaboration. "We kept our visual language while dressing the level in MGS iconography, celebrating the genre's past and present. In the final game, the level is slightly different, but Darwin keeps the Snakeskin camouflage as a permanent homage."

Should Darwin's Paradox be a success, could there be another outing for the octopus, especially as the creature also happens to be on the studio's logo? If not literally, then Tanguy at least teases that its spirit will surely linger. "We created ZDT with a specific mindset: cinematic storytelling, innovative gameplay, a different way of building games as an independent studio," he concludes. "The octopus in the logo represents that - adaptability, creativity, doing more with less."

Darwin's Paradox releases on 2 April for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2. The free Tactical Octopus Action demo is also available on all platforms, including Steam.