Former YAGERs Bring Ancient Art to Life in The Mammoth: A Cave Painting‏

Inbetweengames is a new, Berlin-based development team.

Inbetweengames is a new, Berlin-based development team. Members are programmer Isaac Ashdown, artist Rafal Fedro, and designer Jan David Hassel; they released their first project in August. The Mammoth: A Cave Painting tells the 5-million-year story of the mammoth in about 5 minutes, with a side-scrolling, mythological/folk-style narrative driven by themes of loss.

The game’s artistic style borrows from ancient art and utilizes a soft color palette, with simple lines and scribbles evoking human hunters and their spears in a short but tragic narrative. It’s a miniature and powerfully story-driven game navigated by simple WASD controls, with spoken narration that recalls older storytelling traditions.

The three-person team worked on Spec Ops: The Line with YAGER before departing in summer 2015 after the discontinuation of Dead Island 2. They created The Mammoth in three days for Ludum Dare 33, where they placed 17th for the overall jam category and 6th in the mood category. This is the new team’s first exercise, and they’re already hinting at something bigger in the future. It’s not clear what this will be yet, but in the October 9th announcement of their company the developers said, “[We are] intending to punch above our weight class as hard as we can. It will either work out or it will go up in flames. But it will be fun.”

The Mammoth: A Cave Painting is free to play on OSX and PC, iOS, and Android. For more information, check out the Inbetweengames’s website, Facebook, or Twitter.