--- title: This Hand-Painted Metroidvania Stars Depressed Garbage Man description: SadMonkStudios is developing an untitled chemistry puzzle metroidvania with fully hand-painted visuals. The player controls a sad, cube-shaped man in a world... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/this-hand-painted-metroidvania-stars-depressed-garbage-man-ginubzstr twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: This Hand-Painted Metroidvania Stars Depressed Garbage Man | daily.dev og:description: SadMonkStudios is developing an untitled chemistry puzzle metroidvania with fully hand-painted visuals. The player controls a sad, cube-shaped man in a world... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/this-hand-painted-metroidvania-stars-depressed-garbage-man-ginubzstr og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/gINUBZSTR.png og:image:alt: This Hand-Painted Metroidvania Stars Depressed Garbage Man og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # This Hand-Painted Metroidvania Stars Depressed Garbage Man **[80 LEVEL](https://daily.dev/sources/80lv)** · 2 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary SadMonkStudios is developing an untitled chemistry puzzle metroidvania with fully hand-painted visuals. The player controls a sad, cube-shaped man in a world where everything reacts. The developer says the character needs to look different from the painterly surroundings for story reasons. Visuals were made using Rebelle, a digital painting app that simulates watercolors, oils, and acrylics. The studio is still working out how to handle shadows and normals, and the story remains a mystery. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What tool did SadMonkStudios use to create the hand-painted look for their metroidvania game? SadMonkStudios used Rebelle, a digital painting app that realistically simulates traditional media like watercolors, oils, and acrylics, to create the painterly visuals for their untitled chemistry puzzle metroidvania. The developer described the fully hand-painted art style as a response to AI-generated art, or 'AI slop.' _Indie developers exploring hand-painted art styles can find similar game dev stories on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Solo Developer on Creating an Adventure Game About a Clockwork Toy](https://daily.dev/posts/solo-developer-on-creating-an-adventure-game-about-a-clockwork-toy-nffnkpiqm) · 80 LEVEL · 45 upvotes · 1 comments - [Solo Dev on Making a Hand-Painted Hard Sci-Fi Adventure in Godot](https://daily.dev/posts/solo-dev-on-making-a-hand-painted-hard-sci-fi-adventure-in-godot-ltt5ar3hc) · 80 LEVEL · 13 upvotes · 2 comments - [I Built a Pixel Art Village Where AI Characters Have Real Emotions](https://daily.dev/posts/i-built-a-pixel-art-village-where-ai-characters-have-real-emotions-ovhzrhtbi) · DEV · 73 upvotes · 4 comments --- Tags: [#game-development](https://daily.dev/tags/game-development), [#gaming](https://daily.dev/tags/gaming) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/this-hand-painted-metroidvania-stars-depressed-garbage-man-ginubzstr) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"This Hand-Painted Metroidvania Stars Depressed Garbage Man","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/this-hand-painted-metroidvania-stars-depressed-garbage-man-ginubzstr","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/this-hand-painted-metroidvania-stars-depressed-garbage-man-ginubzstr"},"datePublished":"2026-10-26T15:24:55.450Z","dateModified":"2026-10-26T15:25:18.976Z","description":"SadMonkStudios is developing an untitled chemistry puzzle metroidvania with fully hand-painted visuals. 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