This article was originally published on April 3, 2026 - read the full issue

By Patrick Garratt

Replaced, Sad Cat's 2.5D dystopian science-fiction narrative adventure, has been a long haul.

When studio founders Zura 'Yura' Zhdanovich and Igor Gritsay sat down in a Belarusian bar in 2018 to sketch out the title's themes, centred on AI and the human condition in the face of sentient technology, few could have predicted the type of upheaval the studio would face to bring the project to completion.

Both Zhdanovich and Gritsay were forced to leave Belarus by the war in Ukraine, a disruption that practically stopped development "for several months" and geographically fractured the team. When creative lead Zhdanovich fled his home, he could only take pieces of his PC, principally his beloved GPU, in his backpack. Not exactly ideal conditions for creativity.

"We'd been working in related industries," says Gritsay. "Yura was in mobile. I was in regular IT outsourcing. So we were kind of familiar with the process.

"But nothing could have prepared us for this shitshow."

An end to the turmoil

Geopolitics was not, of course, the sole factor in creating what has been a gruelling process of constant reinvention and adaptation. Sad Cat Studios began development on Replaced in 2019, roughly two years before its debut at the 2021 Xbox and Bethesda showcase alongside fellow premium indie titles Somerville and Twelve Minutes (Replaced will release as a PC and Xbox-exclusive console title). Microsoft, perhaps ironically given the recent shifts in strategy and staff within the organisation, has been one of Replaced's few constants over its development period.

"In the very, very beginning, when we were still without a publisher in 2019, we had the opportunity to have a conversation with Xbox," says Gritsay. "They never lost interest. This eventually led to a Game Pass deal. We never fell off their radar."

While Microsoft has remained solid in its support for the game, shifts in publishers over seven years of development have left the team bruised. Sad Cat initially signed the game to Coatsink, which was then acquired by Thunderful in 2020. Further changes in Sad Cat's publisher arrangement impacted the project when Atari acquired a significant stake in Thunderful in 2024.

"With changes in owners, you lose contact with people who keep the project together and with whom we communicate," says Gritsay. "There were rough times. But right now it's mostly stabilised and it's kind of positive, because, finally, the turmoil is finished."

And nor has the "turmoil" been restricted to publisher relations. The game itself has changed form myriad times over the course of development, having exorcised itself of an "insane" amount of story content and shifted to become a completely hand-drawn 2.5D adventure. Every frame of Replaced's beautiful animation was created manually. When asked about the thinking behind this approach, both founders laugh.

"I would say that we were trying to spend as much money in the least cost-effective way possible," jokes Gritsay.

"In the beginning it was more of a creative decision than anything else," adds Zhdanovich. "We wanted to do it the classic way when the scope was much smaller. After the scope grew, we just stuck with the decision. After a certain point it was too much hassle to do it another way. We wanted it to be very detailed. We didn't want it to be flat, you know, like colours with fluid animation but not a lot of detail.

"So I think that was the driver to make it in this painful, very painful, way."

Despite eyewatering adversity, using AI to create anything in Replaced was never an option. Wars, publisher crises, GPUs in backpacks – none of it mattered. Replaced itself is a story that questions society via the thematic optic of AI. In it, the player controls R.E.A.C.H., an artificial intelligence trapped inside a human body.

"I hate AI," says Zhdanovich. "I've never used any AI at all. I have never used ChatGPT. I have a stance against that personally.

"I think that creative work should be done by people."

Despite Zhdanovich's hardline position on AI, he does concede it may have a place in ideation and pre-production if the project is time-pressured. Whether or not the technology touches any future Sad Cat Studios projects remains to be seen.

"I would leave that up for discussion because we haven't come to a point where we actually need that," he says.

"Maybe at some point in the future, we'll say, 'We need like 100 versions of this thing,' and there's no logical way to do that without [AI]. But, like most of these things, if you have really good direction, it can be done by people.

"And I would love for it to be done by people. That's my take."

And while the future remains exactly that, Replaced is both the past and the present. Painstakingly hand-drawn, 2.5D, independent, AI-free. After seven years, the game will finally be in players' hands on April 14. Gritsay doesn't pause to consider what victory would mean at this point: Sad Cat just wants to continue, to build a secure environment for its staff.

"I'd say the ultimate success for the game is, of course, for us to be able to parallel the development, to make something new while being able to take advantage of our developed technology framework, because it'd be so wasteful to not use it again.

"Success for us is to be able to grow our team, to actually raise salaries for everybody. Because game dev was always more about passion rather than the salaries, unfortunately."

This article was originally published on April 3, 2026 - read the full issue