Step Inside Sneaky's Office: A 3D World is Coming

Okay, I have to tell someone about this, and you all are usually the first to know when I'm working on something big. So let me show you something.

That image up there? That is a real place. Or it will be soon. That's Sneaky's office. His actual office. In a 3D world you can walk into, explore, snoop around, and use to solve cases.

For nearly twenty years now I've been hand-building point-and-click escape games. Flat scenes, hidden objects, clever puzzles. And I love that format with my whole heart, I'm never walking away from it. But for a long time I've had this itch in the back of my brain that won't go away: what if you could actually step inside one of these worlds?

Not in a clunky way. Not with bad controls and ugly textures. I'm talking a cozy, illustrated, hand-painted-feeling 3D world that feels like a Studio Ghibli short film you can wander through. That's the goal. And we're building it right now.

So what is this thing, exactly?

It's a 3D world centered on the Super Sneaky Spy Guy universe. (Of course it is. Sneaky has been the heart of this place since 2006 and he's not stepping aside for anyone.) You play as Sneaky himself, and you explore connected locations, talk to characters, take cases, find clues, solve mysteries.

Think of it like this:

• His office is your home base. That's what you're looking at in the image. Cork board with photos and red string, books on criminology and forensics, that little nameplate that says "Truth Hides. I Find It." That's where every case starts.
• Outside that door is a whole world. Streets, shops, alleyways, suspicious characters loitering in suspicious places. You can run around, climb, swim, pick stuff up, get into trouble.
• The cases are real puzzles. This isn't a 3D world where you press X to solve everything. The mysteries are designed with the same care as my escape games. You have to actually think.
• It's multiplayer. You and your friends can be in the same world at the same time, working a case together. Voice chat, emotes, the whole deal.

Why does this even exist?

Two reasons.

First, escape games have been getting harder and harder to make in the old Flash style. The web changed. The tools changed. The browsers stopped supporting Flash. I've spent the last few years rebuilding the whole engine in modern HTML5 so the games keep working forever, but the technology kept opening new doors. Doors I couldn't help walking through.

Second, I just kept playing 3D games and thinking "Sneaky deserves this." A whole world. Not just a single screen. The character's been around for almost two decades. He's earned a city to live in.

What's in there right now

Okay, here's the part where I get nerdy. We've already got:

• A working multiplayer server. Multiple players in the same room at the same time, syncing perfectly.
• A custom level editor I built from scratch, where I can drag-and-drop entire scenes together. (This is the part I'm proudest of, honestly. It feels like Unity but it runs in a browser.)
• Synty-style low-poly art for the world, with hand-illustrated character portraits and 2D UI overlays. The blend is gorgeous, I promise.
• A full inventory system, NPC quests, dialog, clue tracking, and a working in-game notebook for tracking suspects and evidence.
• Combat. (Yes, combat. Sometimes the bad guys don't want to come quietly. I'll say no more.)
• Driveable vehicles, climbable ledges, swimmable water, breakable objects. The works.

It's not done. Far from it. But it's real, it's playable, and it's coming together faster than I expected.

When can you play it?

I'm not going to give a hard date because every time I do that I make myself a liar. But things are moving fast. We're already past the "is this technically possible?" phase and well into the "what's the next case going to be?" phase, which is where the real fun is.

If you want to be the first to know when we open it up, just keep an eye on the blog. I'll be posting development updates here, sharing concept art, talking about cases I'm designing, and probably begging for feedback. There are a lot of decisions still on the table.

One last thing

I've been doing this a long time. Some of you have been with me since the very first Super Sneaky Spy Guy in 2006. Some of you found me through Hooda Escape. Some of you just stumbled in last week. Whichever it is, thank you. I would not be building wild stuff like this if there wasn't a community on the other end of it.

Sneaky's office is real. The world around it is being built right now. And when it opens, you're invited.

More soon.

— Selfdefiant