m² Waitlist
A narrative game · PC, Steam · 2027

2.5 square meters

Two and a half square meters of rented nothing. One pencil. The only thing standing between M and the galleries of Paris, Rome, New York is what she's willing to paint. And the worse things get in the apartment, the better the canvases sell.

Hop on the waitlist See the world

Every wound she paints sells. Every sale buys her future.

2.5 m² · the loop
Pre-production · Chapter II · the studio
The story

A girl, four cities, and the price of being seen.

She rolls into town with a duffel and a pencil. The room she rents is barely 2.5 square meters. The galleries she's chasing are in Paris, Rome, New York. The flight to any of them might as well be to Mars.

Then life starts happening to her, and not the kind that goes in a postcard. She paints it anyway. Strangers buy. The career builds itself out of her bruises.

Then people in the building start dying. Doors locked from the inside. No marks, no motive, no sense. M paints what she saw. Or thinks she saw. Every canvas finds a buyer before the body's cold, and the inspiration meter quietly fills back up.

By Chapter III the room is full of people who weren't there yesterday and the ceiling stops behaving like a ceiling. By Chapter IV you'll know exactly what the world has been doing with her this whole time. And who has been watching.

  • Dark fantasy
  • Psychological horror
  • Narrative
  • Choice-driven
Four cities

Four cities. One megastructure.

Every chapter sends M somewhere that isn't her apartment. A different sky, a different alphabet, a different way to fail. The further she gets from the room, the less the room behaves like a room. The cities, by Chapter IV, stop pretending to be cities.

01 — NORTH
Chapter II · Day 1

Paris

Iconography · Vatican blue

Sent to study under a man who turns up wrapped in blue tape three days later. The icon she paints him into is the cleanest thing she's drawn yet.

Cyan signalSketches → Icon
02 — EAST
Chapter II · Day 2

Rome

Statue · Childhood object

She sees something in the Vatican she shouldn't have seen as a child. Steal it or leave it. Either way, sanity goes down, and the canvas comes out in oils.

Magenta signalOil painting
03 — SOUTH
Chapter II · Day 2

New York

Soho 70s · The investor

An investor across the table who looks unmistakably like a name in the news. Three answers on the table. One of them opens up a fight scene.

Green signalDigital collage
04 — WEST
Chapter I, III, IV

St Petersburg

The apartment · The hub

The 2.5 m² she comes home to. The hallway that gets longer between chapters. The building that, by the end, isn't a building. Nine floors, like Dante.

Amber signalHub · 9 floors
The cast

Fifteen faces. One simulation.

M, the people in her building, and the people in her head when the walls give. By Chapter IV you'll know which of these faces was doing the killing, which was getting killed, and which was just watching. Until then, every name on this page is a suspect. Almost every slot is open casting. We're answering everyone through Q3.

The pillars06
M, the painter
01
The Painter

M

Twenty-three, redhead, allergic to compromise. Paints what she sees. Lately what she's seen has been getting worse. The only character you can't stop being for long.

Chapter I → IVCast
02
The Gallerist

The man who picks M out of obscurity and starts shipping her abroad. Wants her famous and isn't fussy about how she gets there. Most of the career runs through him.

Chapter I → IVCasting
Cast yourself →
03
The Director

Plumber by day, porn director by night, lives down the hall. The camera he hands M in Chapter II sees the world with the lights wrong. Don't look through it for too long.

Chapter IICasting · 18+
Cast yourself →
04
The Occultist

Keeps turning up in cities M didn't expect, sometimes in worse shape than the last time. Says the same thing every time. M has been told to stop listening to him, and not asked who told her. She doesn't always listen anyway.

Chapter II → IIICasting
Cast yourself →
05
The Friend

Tends bar downstairs. Roommate. The only person actually trying to wake M up when the floor stops being a floor. You play her for a chapter while M is somewhere else entirely.

Chapter III · Playable swapCasting
Cast yourself →
06
The Investor

Across the table in New York. Looks unmistakably like the kind of man you've already heard about. Three chairs at the deal. One of them is a fistfight.

Chapter II · Moral forkCasting
Cast yourself →
The building06
07
The Granny

Lives in the middle room. Owns four cats no one else has ever seen. The kettle is always on, the door is always slightly open, and her stories never quite line up with each other.

Chapter ICasting
Cast yourself →
08
The Student

First-year at the academy. Dresses as Cleopatra to dodge a teacher who shows up in a Caesar costume. Spends most evenings hiding behind M's door, listening for the wrong footsteps in the hallway.

Chapter ICasting
Cast yourself →
09
The Maniac

Has plans most weeks, hasn't pulled one off yet. Polite in the elevator, friendly to children, walks the hallway with a fish knife in his coat pocket like that's a normal thing for a Tuesday.

Chapter ICasting
Cast yourself →
10
The DJ

Lies for a living, lies on his Wikipedia, lies in his sleep. Talks his way through every conversation, and into a few rooms he probably shouldn't be in. Always looks like he just heard something he wasn't supposed to.

Chapter IIICasting
Cast yourself →
11
The Watchman

Sits in the hallway. Sees who comes in, who goes out, who never comes home. Says less than you'd want him to. Probably knows more than anyone in the building.

Chapter I → IV · RecurringCasting
Cast yourself →
12
The Stranger

The face M sees in New York that she swears she's already seen at home. Same eyes, two cities, no explanation she likes. M doesn't bring it up. The Stranger doesn't either.

Chapter IICasting
Cast yourself →
Inside her head03
13
The Mother

Not in the apartment. Not in any apartment. Lives only inside Chapter III, and only as long as M's sanity holds. The first thing M loses when the meter falls.

Chapter III · MemoryCasting
Cast yourself →
14
The Girl

M, age eight. Mute. Holds the parrot. Lives only inside Chapter III, on the wrong side of a memory M has been avoiding her whole adult life. The reason any of this is happening.

Chapter III · MemoryCasting · Child role
Cast yourself →
15
The Parrot

Goga

Says one phrase. Says it at the wrong moments. Has a way of going quiet right before things go wrong, and louder right after. The only character with no audition.

Chapter III · MemoryAnimal · Locked
How you play

Pick. Paint. Fight. Survive.

Four kinds of moves, one apartment. Some doors you draw open. Some you punch through. Some you walk past, and find out later you shouldn't have. Drawing is one verb on the list, not the whole list.

01

Pick

Steal the statue or leave it. Sleep with the investor, refuse him, or hit him. Walk past the man taped to the wall or cut him down. Most doors have three handles, and the one you grab re-paints the canvas, re-colors the room, and decides which of the four endings is even on the table.

02

Paint

Trace a contour, close the line, the thing becomes real. The palette tracks her mood, so some canvases come out as iconography, some go full digital collage, one in Chapter III goes straight Munch. Every finished piece sells, and the career is exactly that. One painting at a time.

03

Fight

Some choices aren't choices. When the man across the table looks like Epstein and won't take the answer, there's a third button. The combat opens up. It costs sanity, costs inspiration, costs you the deal. And we don't always tell you when fighting is on the table.

04

Survive

Director's camera puzzles. A maniac to outrun. An airport gate to make on time. A coma to crawl out of, while you also play her best friend trying to wake her up from the outside. Chapter III is mostly this, and most of it is how you keep her alive long enough to finish the next painting.

Three resources

Three meters that decide your ending.

Resource 01

Inspiration

Comes from looking. Coffee shops, fights on the train, sunsets, somebody else's show on a Tuesday. And whatever the building does at 3am, which lately has been a lot. Burns up the second you touch a canvas. Run dry and your hand starts lying.

Resource 02

Sanity

Drops every time the game does something to her, which is often. Decides which endings you can even reach. End of Chapter II it drops 50% on its own — what you've banked up to then decides whether Chapter III is hell on easy or hell on hard.

Resource 03

The camera

Yes, the camera is its own character, and yes, by Chapter III it stops behaving. By Chapter IV it leaves M entirely. If the frame starts drifting on you, that's not your machine. That's the game saying something out loud.

Structure

Four chapters. Four endings.

  1. I
    3 in-game days · St Petersburg

    Arrival

    You land in the city, find the apartment, meet the strangers sleeping on the other side of the wall. Three deaths, three canvases, one gallerist. Three days to figure out where the kettle is.

  2. II
    3 days · Paris → Rome → New York

    Work

    First flight, first hotel that's nicer than home. Then somebody in the building dies in a way that doesn't fit on a police report, in a city M wasn't in. By the end of the chapter the sanity meter drops by half on its own.

  3. III
    3 days · Inside her head

    Fracture

    You wake up as M's friend, trying to wake M up from the outside. The mother dies. The Girl dies. The parrot dies, and you might be the one who killed him. The camera quietly stops listening. M keeps painting because what else is there.

  4. IV
    Triumph · Megastructure

    Reveal

    The galleries finally clap. Then the floor goes transparent. M walks a nine-floor stairwell that lines up suspiciously with Dante, opens a door, and finds the megastructure she was always inside. The four endings come down to whether she jumps. Whether the game lets her.

Pre-production frames

The look of it.

Six frames the team locked already. The temperature, the lighting, the rooms. Everything else gets built around these.

The kitchen
The studio
The bust
Paris at dusk
Clocks and signs
The dome
Partners

Pull up a chair.

The labels, designers, channels and one or two delightful weirdos building 2.5 m² with us. Some chairs are filled, some are wide open. If you make the right thing, your row is one email away.

01 Wardrobe · Fashion

The brand that dresses M

We're picking one fashion brand to put on M and the four pillars. Whoever lands the seat goes on every poster, every reel, every Steam screenshot, every cosplay forever. Independent labels, design houses with a recognizable hand, real archives. Drop a lookbook and we'll talk.

Send a lookbook Reviewing brands
02 Score · Music

The soundtrack and the room tone

We're not chasing a "game composer." We're chasing someone who scores films. Strings, piano, a single broken radio. Send demos, we listen to all of them.

Send a demo In talks
03 Cast · Faces

The faces behind the four characters

Real people we scan and reference. Posture, hands, the way somebody actually sits at a table. Likeness only for now, voice acting comes later. Models, talent, agencies, anyone with the right face. Pitch a collab and we'll see who fits.

Pitch a collab Casting
04 Channels · True crime

True-crime YouTubers and podcasters

If you do the slow, careful, dark long-form stuff, we've got a Chapter III breakdown made for your audience. Co-cuts, demo access, exclusive lore.

Pitch us Slot open
05 AI avatars · The four characters

In-world social accounts

Each pillar character has their own AI-driven channel. Posting reels, dropping receipts, pretending the game is real. Going live closer to the Steam page reveal.

Hidden · Q3 reveal
06 Direction · Boosty

Scene-direction consultant

We're talking to working porn directors with a real catalog and a real eye for this seat. The job is sitting in on scene composition and blocking, not shooting. Experience on set is the bar. Send a reel and a Boosty if you've got the body of work.

Send a reel Reviewing · 18+
Become a partner
If you loved these

You already know the room.

We made this for the people who finished these and went looking for the next one. If any of them messed you up, we owe you the follow-up.

Slay the Princess

Branches that hurt. Choices that don't let you off the hook.

Scarlet Hollow

Slow horror, hand-drawn, the kind that gets quoted on Tumblr at 3am.

Fear & Hunger

Slow, dark, mean on purpose. Proof the audience for stuff like ours is wide awake.

Pathologic 2

Town that thinks. Studio that doesn't blink. The reason we keep our tone honest.

Waitlist

Be the first inside the room.

First crack at the closed demo. The Steam page the second it goes live. The first cut of the score. Concept art, deleted scenes, dev notes we wouldn't post anywhere else. We hate spam too. One email every couple of weeks, max.

You'll get dev updates. One click to leave whenever.

  • · First playtest of the demo chapter
  • · Discount on launch day
  • · Production diary, concept art, the lore we don't put on Steam