There are several platforms game developers can use to create those fantastic time-wasters, I mean hand-eye coordination boosters, that we all know and love. The most well-known are Unreal Engine, Unity, and Godot. But sometimes, a developer decides to go off the beaten path and build their game in something totally unexpected… like Microsoft PowerPoint.

That’s right, I said PowerPoint, the dreaded bane of countless meetings and presentations. I’ve seen some pretty crazy uses for Microsoft Office apps, and now I can add a really fun game to the list. In 2022, architect Jack Strait quietly developed and released Roche Limit: The Death of CMK entirely in the presentation software most of us have on our computers but would never think of for gaming.

A ‘one-thousand-something’ slideshow that doesn’t feel like it

If you see someone playing Roche Limit, you might not even realize it’s running in PowerPoint. It runs full-screen, and Strait took advantage of the slideshow software’s phenomenal support for animated GIFs to kill the static vibe most slides are known for. Instead, you see leaves blowing in the wind, eyes blinking, and even a hand reaching down to pick up an item.

It certainly became tedious for Strait to build the pixel art within his game. There are more than 1,500 slides with over 80 unique scenes he had to hand draw. In an interview with Game Developer, Strait said he “had to draw each and every one of [his] frames.”

He went on to note that it would have been easier if Adobe Photoshop supported key-frame animation, which creates a smooth transition between two object positions, when he was developing the game.

Strait’s skill in stop-motion animation shines, though. Watching the movement, flashing lights, and figures that appear and disappear makes me forget that I’m playing a game that’s really a PowerPoint slideshow. It’s a point-and-click game that offers a genuinely retro feel since it’s all constructed of pixel art.

Classifying an eerie, unclassifiable game like Roche Limit

Roche Limit is a cosmic concept in astronomy. It’s the distance at which a celestial body, like a moon or a planet, will break apart. This happens because the gravitational pull of the celestial body is weaker than the tidal forces caused by the gravitational pull of another celestial body. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that the game is considered cataclysmic.

But is it really a horror game? In an interview with Game Developer, Strait pointed out that for the “sake of marketing, calling it a horror game works well.” But the reality is much more complex. In fact, the game doesn’t really feel like much of anything I’ve played before, and that’s apparently just what Strait was going for.

Though if I'm trying to be more precise, I'd possibly just call it an alarming surrealist game. Kinda in the same way that Inland Empire by David Lynch isn't really a horror movie. Parts of it are pretty frightening, but it really evades categorization. I love art that does that.

From the start, Strait knew only that he wanted the game to be designed around a house. When he first started formulating his thoughts for the game, he was an architecture student at Iowa State University. While studying Roman architecture abroad for a semester, he drew his first sketch of the house where Roche Limit takes place.

Inspiration for the game’s artwork

Even though Strait was almost entirely unversed in pixel art and animation, he had seen plenty of it to inspire him. In the interview with Game Developer, Strait explained his love for the pixel artist Anas Abdin and titles like the horror web series Petscop and the children’s point-and-click game franchise Pajama Sam.

Strait said the way his game developed may have roots in those early Pajama Sam days. It was the first point-and-click game he ever played, but he doubts that he ever completed it. Instead, he watched his father play it, and the game’s vibe stuck with him because of how surreal it seemed.

The game centers around the house he drew years earlier because Strait loves “examples of extreme abandonment.” Citing examples like the Cahokia mounds near St. Louis, Missouri, Strait drew inspiration about the surreal feeling of being somewhere devoid of life when it once flourished with activity.

An amazingly complex and robust game

I’ve played through Roche Limit three times, trying different options along the way. When I say this doesn’t feel like I’m using PowerPoint, I mean that this title can pull things off I never thought could be done within the constraints of a slideshow. In several places, the directional arrows you click to progress through the game appear to go absolutely haywire. They flip directions, twist around, disappear, and then reappear.

Roche Limit has a single ending, but Strait has additional endings in mind. The current version concludes with “Ending 1 of 3,” leaving the possibility of two different variations on how the game finishes. Unfortunately, there’s no word on when those additional endings might be added.

When you play or watch a play-through of Roche Limit, you forget that it’s running in something you’d use at work to give a boring presentation. This point-and-click adventure game looks genuinely retro. The smooth, natural transitions from one scene to the next are much like point-and-click games such as Monkey Island. This could easily compete with other weird horror games you might download online, only you download a PowerPoint slideshow file instead of an installer or executable.

Not your office’s PowerPoint

Roche Limit is a fun diversion that doesn’t take long to complete. The fact that it’s a PowerPoint slideshow with 1,536 individual slides disappears into the back of your mind almost immediately. The game is officially available only through MediaFire, a link found in the official trailers on Strait’s YouTube channel. You don’t even need a 4K-ready gaming PC to play it.

Strait says his next game will likely have its own dedicated website and download page.