Alterlimb

About the game

In Alterlimb, you play as Azu, a teenager who survives a devastating industrial explosion and wakes up partially rebuilt with modular cybernetic limbs. To uncover the truth behind the blast, you'll explore the crumbling, automated ruins that surround you and the only way through is your own body.

A 2D side-scroller built around a single idea

You don't pick up tools. You become the tool. Azu's right arm can be swapped with different modules, each designed to overcome a specific obstacle:

• Saw arm >>> cut through obstacles and tear down the machines that stand in your way
• Grapple arm >>> cross wide gaps and reach distant platforms

Every obstacle visually suggests its solution. The challenge isn't just precise jumping, it's reading the environment and choosing who you need to be in that moment.

Adapt, or stay behind

The ruins are guarded by an antagonist that isn't a person, but a system: an automated industrial network of drones, turrets and security machines that treats Azu as an anomaly to eliminate. Fight your way through three handcrafted levels:

• The Abandoned Factory >>>learn to wield your modular body and claim the saw, your first weapon
• The Metro >>> outrun drone chases and traverse collapsing tunnels as tremors tear the ground apart
• The AI >>> a final confrontation against the system itself, an enemy that corrupts your own body from the inside

But every module you equip pushes Azu a little further from his original body. The deeper you go, the harder the question becomes: reclaim your humanity, or embrace the machine?

Features

• A modular "body-as-loadout" system where your arm is your ability
• Readable, handcrafted level design, with short tutorial at the start of the first level introduces you to the controls and the core mechanics, so you can learn the language of your body before the ruins start testing it.
• A cold, post-industrial world heavy with abandonment and quiet dread
• A stylized 2D art direction with strong silhouettes and desaturated tones
• A difficulty curve built on the "Easy to Learn, Hard to Master" principle

Controls

Q / D — Move left / right

Z / S — Operate freight lifts and elevators

Space — Jump

A — Swap right arm module

Left click — Attack

Right click — Interact with the environment

Enter — Skip / advance tutorial text

Escape — Pause menu

Alterlimb is a student project developed at ESMA (Bordeaux).