How Crushed In Time reimagines Sherlock Holmes as a LucasArts-inspired adventure

There have been many interpretations of Baker Street's famous residents, Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr Watson, but one that comes to mind in recent years is the pair from the nonsensically meta There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension. While they only featured in one chapter of a game riffing off many game parodies, French studio Draw Me A Pixel evidently figured there was enough substance to expand their antics into a feature-length spin-off, Crushed In Time.

Whereas the previous game was a 2D pixel art game, this upcoming game somewhat subverts the studio's name by moving into 3D. But compared to the '90s, when classic 2D characters transitioned to 3D, art director Loric Garriguenc describes it as an update rather than an overhaul.

"Even though Crushed In Time is a spin-off, my goal was to create continuity with There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension," he explains. "My main mission was to ensure that people who had played There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension would recognise Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson at first glance. To achieve this, I opted to update their silhouettes, proportions, and colours rather than completely overhaul them. For example, the silhouettes were adapted to the angular, unstructured style of the art direction."

Art designed on instinct

When developing the art direction, Garriguenc says he initially worked from his instincts and started without a mood board, though once he received ideas from studio director Pascal Cammisotto, he acknowledges his key inspirations came from Disney cartoons as well as '90s LucasArts point-and-click adventure games.

"All of this ended up giving rise to the slightly burlesque style with exaggerated proportions that you see today," he explains. "Artistically speaking, I had a lot of fun with vanishing points: each scene gives the impression that there is only one, when in reality there are several, which helps maintain consistency in this unstructured style."

While the team had made There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension with Unity, joking on its Steam page about its "incredible 3D graphics that are flat", this time the engine's 3D capabilities have been used, albeit paradoxically still looking like a 2D game.

"Crushed In Time is indeed a 3D game ... that looks like a 2D game!" Garriguenc affirms. "This added a good dose of challenge for our art direction, as the broken perspectives forced us to cheat with the cameras and viewpoints. In other words, what you see on screen is only one perspective or viewpoint of a 3D environment that is much more unstructured than it appears."

3D evolves the genre

There is one element where the 3D arguably stands out: its core mechanic, which makes Crushed In Time not really a point-and-click game but rather a point-and-grab one. Because instead of clicking on objects, you grab them and pull them with an elastic mechanic, creating an inventive, slapstick way to solve puzzles by manipulating objects, the environment, and even Holmes and Watson. Strangely, I'm most reminded of Super Mario 64's title screen, where you could just pull and stretch Mario's face in absurd ways, more than recent sleuth games like Agatha Christie - Death on the Nile.

On one hand, it almost looks as if objects and environments are just being stretched from 2D, so I try to tease out just exactly how this effect is achieved. Although Garriguenc is a little more guarded on giving away production secrets, he does confirm that the manipulated assets are 3D.

"You'll be able to see that this is basically 3D very clearly with the camera, which oscillates slightly to follow the cursor when you play. The elasticity system is on top of the 3D, allowing you to interact with the image as if it were 2D. Artistically speaking, it has an impact, since you have to produce visual elements that can be distorted by the elasticity of the game without producing horrible results. In other words, you have to avoid elements that are too small, for example, as they can produce graphic artefacts when distorted."

Overall, then, Crushed In Time looks and feels like an inventive blend of 2D and 3D, distinguishing it from an era when classic point-and-click adventures like Monkey Island and Broken Sword made a full leap to 3D with entries that aren't exactly remembered fondly. And while the studio's remaining tight-lipped on just where Holmes and Watson's adventure will take them, expect it to be just as meta and silly as its last game.

"On the artistic side, Crushed In Time is a very meta game about video game creation, which doesn't shy away from taking a few detours along the way," Garriguenc concludes. "This gives players the opportunity to discover different artistic directions, some of which are already featured in our official screenshots!"

Crushed In Time is coming to PC in 2026, and you can download a demo on Steam.