Fable Meets Classic Disney In New Fantasy Action Adventure

Published Nov 10, 2026, 9:32 AM EST

James is a gaming writer from London who has spent thousands of hours exploring titles from every genre. Though he has a particular affinity for multiplayer titles like World of Warcraft, Destiny 2 and League of Legends, he has also put thousands of hours into single-player experiences, from deep RPGs to epic PC strategies. When he's not playing or writing, he can usually be found supporting his beloved Brentford FC.

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There are plenty of games out there that slot effortlessly into our predetermined categories and genres, letting us know what to expect, while at the same time potentially impinging on the excitement it has to offer. Murals is not one of those games, defying many of the expectations that one might have for it, and bringing players something entirely new in the process.

If you really want a definition, Murals is an action-adventure set in a fairytale world where increasingly eccentric characters are having all kinds of peculiar problems. That said, it's hiding a lot more under the proverbial hood than descriptions and store pages might suggest, so we sat down with the minds (and hands) behind the game over at Dlala Studios, CEO Aj Grand-Scrutton and Art Director Lucy Kyriakidou, to get a better understanding of exactly what sets Murals apart so much.

Weird And Wonderful

Dlala Studio

"So the sales pitch here is that it’s a twisted isometric hack-and-slash action adventure. We were going through weird versions of fairytales as a nameless amnesiac hero, but for us it was really about making a fun and hopefully funny comedy action adventure where you get to smack creatures with hammers and swords and various weapons. It's our love of combat put into a game that, hopefully, is quite pick-up and play," Grand-Scrutton explains.

"The main motivation is that we’re pretty weird. I think our Battletoads is quite a weird Battletoads. One of the mini-games in that has you massaging an alien. I always say the best stories you can tell are the ones that feel natural to you, and I think we’re all just a little bit weird. Going back and giving our own interpretations of these things feels very Dlala."

At the same time, the painted style of the game is genuinely pretty breathtaking to jump into for the first time, and it's clear that plenty of passion has gone into the project. As Kyriakidou confirms, evoking that feeling in the player is all a result of leaning into the team's strengths, above all else.

"We basically wanted to make sure the art team had a lot of fun, so we decided to lean into what they're best at. We have great painters and amazing concept artists, so what we wanted to do is take those and make it our own. The same way we wanted to make the stories our own. We're like, ‘let's make this art style what we all enjoy and what we're best at.

"We took what we learned from previous games, obviously, about clarity, but this is a different genre, isometric, and it was not what we did for the last two games, at the very least. So, we did have a back and forth to make sure the team was playing the game and we were checking in. If anybody had issues seeing something then we would address that. We got to a point where we were like, ‘Okay, let's make some clear rules with what we're doing, like lighting the floors and having contrast. We still check from time to time to make sure that we do have that there. We do have people on the team with color blindness, so we want to make sure that people get the most out of the game without worrying about hitting a wall."

Visually Appealing, But Clarity Wins The Day

One of the most impressive things about Murals at this juncture is that the combat comes with a remarkable level of visual clarity. At any one time, there can be a lot of things going on, from missiles heading towards you to things falling from the sky, all while melee minions attack with enthusiasm.

In a hand-painted world, the easiest pitfall would have been for those sequences to become a bit of a mess, and difficult for even the most ocularly sound of us to define properly. As someone who is color-blind, it's even easier to be caught out by games that haven't done their diligence in this regard, but Murals' prowess in that area doesn't come about by accident.

"Combat has been a nightmare, both visually and from a gameplay perspective. We've iterated on everything, and every time we land on something, we’d then iterate on the next bit, and then it wouldn't work. Honestly, I don't think we're really truly locked in the combat experience until six or seven months ago," Grand-Scrutton says.

"At one point, we had amazing weapons, but we couldn't get the enemies feeling good and then vice versa. It really took Chris Jones, who was art producer on Battletoads. He really wanted to move into design, and so this was his first foray, but he hadn't been there for all the baggage we had, all the different iterations. So he took it on and then he pitched me and Grant, and he said, the thing about modern Doom is that each of the enemies only really does one thing, and the interest comes from the combinations, and what happens when the player is put against two pairs of enemies that he’s never faced in that combo before. It sounded weird but we let him play with it and that's what you see now. Although you wouldn't look at the game and think Doom is in it, it was probably the biggest influence for each enemy just doing one thing really well and then pairing them up. Combat was a nightmare, but, once again, we're still refining, we're still balancing."

As you might expect, it was just as difficult to get the game to where it is from an art perspective, as Kyriakidou explains further.

"The enemies have been something we just keep going back to. We designed and made sure that what they do is very clear and you know if you've seen one enemy, if one looks similar, you roughly know what they're going to do. But it was only a few days ago that the colors [were settled]. After some user testing AJ was on the call and he says, ‘oh, they actually said that the colors are very clear’, And I said ‘OK, everybody stop. Stop what you're doing. Please. We found it.’ All of our worlds are very unique, and they have their own moods, color palettes, and lighting, so finding consistency in the enemies so they stand out anywhere has been an absolute nightmare."

Loafing About

Dlala Studio

Murals also features an adorable player companion affectionately known as Loaf. Loaf is different from every other character in the game in that he is essentially a sketch, a doodle on the edge of a page. Loaf also comes with some amazing lines in both cutscenes, and while the player is actively playing the game, continuing the light tone that makes it so enjoyable in the first place. As a character, it also serves as the conduit through which the team can experiment vociferously, as Grand-Scrutton details.

"My lead writer, Kelsey, and I, we always say Loaf is basically the biggest self-insert. Lowe is the weird conversations that Kelsey and I have every day. That is what Loaf is. And Kelsey is the voice of Loaf, so even more so. I love Doodle Bob. I think Doodle Bob's a fantastic sponge. I think everyone's always scared to approach that, but he was literally the first on the call sheet for references. This is an airy-fairy creative director’s answer to this, but it is the truth. Everything in the world that pre-exists before what we're playing is 2D. The 3D characters are either the invasive force which is the distorted, and the hero to an extent, or it's the big boss fights later on, and they've been manipulated by the Creator.

"Loaf isn't either one of those things. Loaf was a sketch in your notebook that when the Creator used his magic to bring one of these murals to life, Loaf was this side effect that got caught up in it. So I didn't want Loaf to be pretty and have all the depth and dynamic lighting that everyone else had. I wanted Loaf to really feel like somebody had pulled him off of the page and thrown him into reality. What's really fun about that is that we have three categories: We have 3D characters, we have our 2D NPCs, and then Loaf is a cartoon character. A lot of the other 2D characters don't really follow cartoon rules. They have a bit of stretch and squish to them, but Loaf pops in with a balloon. His transformation animation in Rapunzel is one of my favorite animations in the whole game. Loaf can do whatever we want in that sense. That was really fun to me because he's just perfectly imperfect, and he's a proper little weirdo. He's a proper little weirdo."

Nothing By Accident

Dlala Studios

As you progress through the game, you'll notice elements that play into the wider story of the game and its setting. In the preview levels we played through, Rapunzel's hair serves as a method of navigating up and down, essentially replacing the simple ladder in some sections. While there are other ways to do this that don't make a tangible difference to the gameplay loop, the methods Dlala have used add so much richness to the world, and it's a theme that continues later in the game.

"The game is split into sections and each section contains a bunch of murals. The first two levels you play, and that includes Rumpelstiltskin that comes just after, they're really about introducing you to this world, the mechanics etc. The further you get through the game, the bigger the world becomes," Grand-Scrutton says.

"If you ever get a chance to see the announce trailer, it's only in there for a split second, but in the Hansel and Gretel level, there are these big gingerbread head interactions where you're rotating platforms and kicking balls, and that was based on like Screwball Scramble and things like that. The mechanics within the levels come a lot more into play, but we never really used anything like puzzles, for instance, because we don't want to chuck them into the middle of the game and you get stuck because you're a combat player who doesn't want it. The more you move through, the more you'll get to interact with different parts of the world."

As Kyriakidou details further, absolutely none of those additions are going to stand out as unnatural, and all fit within the wider setting as a whole.

"They also always make sense within the world itself. That's why it never feels like it's just there to add things to do. It's more, ‘This world, what would it have? How would it change?’ It always feels like it's part of the environment, part of the story itself."

All The Ingredients For Greatness

After spending a couple of hours with the game, it's abundantly clear that Murals has all the ingredients to potentially be in Game of the Year conversations when it drops in 2027. It's very tight mechanically, the world is engrossing, the jokes are funny, and Bob Mortimer is in it (which is never be a bad thing).

If it can carry the momentum it quickly builds up through to the end credits, then it will absolutely be one of the best examples of the genre in recent years. There are a lot of questions to answer between now and then, but Murals is clearly playing to win, and it has every chance of doing just that.

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