Ancient Egyptian Wall Art Comes Alive in Fresco And the Haters Are Missing the Point

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Fresco is a small indie game in development right now that blew up on social media yesterday. You play as an archaeologist walking around an ancient Egyptian temple in full 3D, but you also jump into the wall paintings and become one of those flat, stylized 2D figures from Egyptian art. The puzzles force you to switch back and forth between the two views to make progress.

The visual style also stands out immediately, the Egypt theme feels atmospheric, and the core mechanic of linking 3D exploration with 2D painted worlds gives it a unique identity even if you have seen dimension-switching before. Plenty of normal people who don’t live on social media or gaming forums or replay every Nintendo title their whole life are seeing this for the first time and thinking “damn that’s cool”, and that’s perfectly fine. Getting viral attention like this is rare for indies and can actually help the game get finished and reach more players.

The “backlash” you’re probably seeing on social media (especially X) is mostly from the usual chronically online crowd who treat games like a competition of who has consumed the most references. They scream “this is just like Super Mario Odyssey’s 2D sections” or whatever, as if originality only counts if literally nothing similar has ever existed anywhere.

No mechanic is truly 100% new in 2026, almost everything builds on something, but execution, theme, and overall vibe matter way more than “has it been done exactly once before”. Dismissing the whole thing because a similar idea popped up in one level of a huge Nintendo game years ago is just petty and misses the point of why people get hyped for indies.

The hate mostly comes across as burned-out negativity from people who forgot how to just enjoy the announcement of something interesting without needing to one-up it or tear it down. An indie getting this much positive spotlight should be celebrated, especially when the trailer looks this stylish and the idea has clear hook.

If the final game delivers on the promise (good puzzles, smooth switching, solid atmosphere), it’ll stand on its own no matter what anyone says about “not original enough”. The complainers will move on to the next thing to whine about anyway. Let people be excited without turning it into a fight.

You can wishlist Fresco on Steam.