Crushed in Time Interview – Draw Me a Pixel’s Freddi Malavasi Talks Meta, Community & More

Featuring time travel, classic detectives, and meta mysteries, Draw Me a Pixel’s comedic adventure Crushed in Time is setting a crash course for a June 10 Steam launch.

We recently asked Draw Me a Pixel’s Associate Producer and Communication Manager Freddi Malavasi questions around Crushed in Time’s meta, community, and more – learn more with our interview…

Crushed in Time Interview – Draw Me a Pixel’s Freddi Malavasi Talks Meta, Community & More

Gamers Heroes

Congrats on the upcoming launch of Crushed in Time!

What were some of the key learnings from There is no Game: Wrong Dimension you wanted to implement in this release?

Freddi Malavasi 

There is no doubt that there is a real audience interested in meta games that explore video games, their design, and the industry itself. 

There Is No Game started out as a joke for a Game Jam; today, we’re bringing you its successor, developed by a full-fledged team.

Gamers Heroes

I saw that Crushed in Time is an “elastic” point-and-click game!

What inspired this direction, and what is one thing you hope players will notice in the final release?

Freddi Malavasi 

We really wanted to make a point-and-click game, but we quickly realized that games of this genre are very austere these days. 

As we thought about how we could make the whole experience more satisfying, we were inspired by Nintendo’s approach (Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, which breathes new life into the XCOM-style genre, is an excellent example), and we came up with the idea that elasticity could make the game much more fun and satisfying to play.

And above all, I hope players will notice the paradigm shift that Crushed In Time brings to point-and-click games. 

Here, you aren’t playing a video game: you’re stuck inside it.

To put it simply, the game’s introduction explains that you’re at the Crushed In Time launch party at our offices, before suddenly being sucked into a screen. 

So you won’t be controlling characters or an interface, but rather taking advantage of the universe’s strange elasticity to manifest yourself—a bit like a ghost—in order to help Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson restore order to their game.

Gamers Heroes

When it comes to Crushed in Time – or even There is no Game: Wrong Dimension – what inspired the many meta elements?

Freddi Malavasi 

Crushed In Time is certainly a story of love and time travel, but it’s also—and above all—a story about video games and what it means to create them.

Gamers Heroes

From Twitter/X to Bluesky to even Discord, what are some of your favorite community stories around Crushed in Time?

Freddi Malavasi 

We released There Is No Game six years ago, which is more than enough time for a community to fade away. 

Yet we have a core group of fans on our Discord who have remained very active all this time, chatting with each other to try to imagine what we were creating, but also to share fan art and stories featuring the game’s characters. 

It feels really strange to say this, but we’ve even seen some young teenagers grow into adults and share with the community the inevitable anxieties of that time: exams, driver’s licenses, first romances… 

It’s a bit like a little family, and we genuinely love them.

Gamers Heroes

I saw that the different Draw Me a Pixel team bios on Steam! 

What is your favorite Draw Me a Pixel team story throughout Crushed in Time’s development?

Freddi Malavasi 

The fact that we’ve managed to work together for so many years without having an office and with a no-crunch policy. 

Draw Me A Pixel is 100% remote, and our team is (or has been) made up of people from all over France. 

We even worked with an Austrian VFX artist for a year. So, of course, this sometimes comes with its share of minor hassles, like when we try to describe a character’s movement over our microphones. 

But personally, I think that managing to release a game under these conditions is a testament to the role remote work should play in the video game industry. 

And, yes: creating a game without crunch is possible.

One can wishlist Crushed in Time via its official Steam page ahead of its June 10 release.

For those feeling social, make sure to follow the official Twitter/X and Bluesky social media channels!

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