You don't hear much about game developers like the U.K.'s Dlala Studios: neither a AAA megalith nor a fashionable indie, but a smallish outfit that's been chipping away at the coalface for years, making characterfully animated versions of other people's properties. I suspect there are more of these studios out there than any of us realize, propping up bigger projects with their work-for-hire services in between trying to get their own games off the ground. You might know Dlala from its 2020 take on Rare's vintage beat-em-up Battletoads, or from its 2023 Mickey Mouse platformer, Disney Illusion Island.
Now it's time for the studio's "one for me," in the form of Murals, a combat-heavy isometric action-adventure that looks like Hades but is chasing something much simpler and more nostalgic: a linear cartoon romp full of wit and quirky charm. I found Dlala in an appealingly scruffy workspace on a small industrial estate in the unremarkable commuter town of Witham in Essex, a 40-minute train ride from London. Founder and local boy Aj Grand-Scrutton (huge, chatty, barrel-chested, with the hair and beard of Gandalf) proudly gave a tour in his slides, apologizing for the absence of his dog and the number of monitors plugged into his PC (seven).
He finished with the cinema projection room management had built in secret while the staff was working remotely during COVID. For a studio like this, it's all about keeping the lights on, but Grand-Scrutton is careful not to disown Battletoads and Illusion Island, which he says the studio was given a lot of freedom on, as mere work-for-hire. He considers both "true Dlala games." Nevertheless, Murals is different.
For one thing, Dlala will self-publish it. For another, it is entirely Dlala's own creation, unless you count the classic fairy tales it is extremely loosely based on. In Dlala's offices, I played the first two chapters, or "murals," of the game, based on Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel.
The player controls The Hero, a sturdy, silent protagonist in baggy overalls who can inline-skate around for a lick of extra speed. The Hero has been transported into this twisted fairy-tale mural by The Creator, a self-aware meta-villain; in the process, The Hero's sidekick Loaf, a chirpy and loquacious slice of bread, has been accidentally brought to life from a sketch in The Hero's pocket. Grand-Scrutton has a passion for 2D animation (he idolizes 16-bit titles like Cool Spot and Aladdin), and loves to write silly, surreal, pun-riddled scripts.
The Hero picks up a sword called Slash Gordon and a medallion called Dragon Thee Dallion. Sleeping Beauty has turned from a soporific damsel into a haughty insomniac called Bri who needs to listen to heavy metal at full volume to sleep. Rapunzel is Harriet, tortured by her own hair, and attended by a surfer-dude prince called Kit who is blinded by "the foreboding weight of my previous self." Grand-Scrutton is extremely proud to have obtained the services of dadaist British comedy legend Bob Mortimer to voice Magic Dave, a vendor of boons. (If you want to laugh until you can't breathe anymore, search for clips of Mortimer's appearances on the panel show Would I Lie to You?) In other words, we're in Whimsy Town.
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