Rusty Lake

We are Rusty Lake:

Creators of the praised Cube Escape series and the premium point-and-click adventures Rusty Lake Hotel and award-winning Rusty Lake: Roots.

Dear visitor,

Welcome to Rusty Lake, a surreal place where anything can happen. We offer you the most mysterious game series you'll ever play.

Why not try out our praised Cube Escape series first? Let the cubes guide you the eerie and atmospheric point-and-click adventures with an "escape room" feeling. Currently we have ten Cube Escape games taking place in the Rusty Lake universe. Cube Escape: Paradox is our latest installment which is combined with a short film! Download them for ten on iOS, Android or play on Desktop.

Next to our Cube Escape series we created three premium adventure games with unique story lines taking place in Rusty Lake as well. Serve deadly dinners to five animal-headed guests in Rusty Lake Hotel, expand the bloodline of the Vanderbooms in our award-winning adventure Rusty Lake: Roots or stop the ten plagues on a small island in Rusty Lake Paradise.

On the right, you can find a list of all our games sorted by release date.

On our game portal you can play our free games but also find other adventure, room escape and puzzle games. We selected games with a fascinating story, ambiance or unique game-play made by more forward-looking developers.

Check out our blog, social media or newsletter for new updates and content.

We wish you a pleasant stay in Rusty Lake!

Read more about the studio
  • AwardIndie Prize, Best Narrative Award ‘16
  • AwardTop 10 Google Play Indie Games Contest ‘17
  • AwardPremiere Paradox - A Rusty Lake Film @ LIFF '18
  • Award"Most Inventive" App nomination Google Play Awards ‘18
  • AwardFinalist Google Play Indie Games Contest ‘20

The Past Within – Devlog

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The Past Within – Devlog

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We’re celebrating Albert’s birthday with our first ever devlog! First of all thank you so much for sharing your burning questions – we will do our best to answer most of them in a series of devlogs about The Past Within. Working on this game has been a long journey (more than 2 years) with a lot of ups and downs – and while we are furiously working towards a release, we’d love to give you a peek inside our development process, our progress so far, and share our struggles along the way.

A short history

When we finished the Paradox project we knew we had to make something different. We had to improve, innovate and just try out new things. We came up with a lot of prototypes – one of which turned into The White Door! During this period we also explored the possibility of creating a Rusty Lake project in Unity – knowing that Flash will die soon. We teamed up with fellow Dutch developers Luuk and Martijn to explore the capabilities of Unity. We started out with a remake of Samsara Room, and while doing this we investigated the option of adding an extra level with a 3D cube (you might remember the 3D influence when navigating outside the window towards the cube).


The first designs of the 3D puzzle cube

Months passed and it turned out that creating puzzles around a level with a 3D cube was way more exciting than the 2D remake. At that point we decided to fully commit to creating a new game based around the 3D puzzle cube, rather than it being an extra level in an existing 2D game. The most interesting part of this puzzle cube was the idea of having a peephole. A way to look into the cube, almost like looking into a shoebox.

Having a different perspective brought many new opportunities to the table. It would be the first time you could really peek into a 2D Cube Escape-style room from the outside – zoom out and then move around the box with smooth 3D gameplay. Having a lot of elements outside the room that could influence the inside was a new kind of gameplay that made us very excited!


The shoebox idea and a build in which you could activate the electricity on the outside, to turn a light on inside

From there we made many many iterations in both gameplay and story. But the core remained the same; we wanted to combine the inside (2D) view and the outside of a cube (3D). The most important part to us is that we remained enthusiastic about the project and its main character and that’s also why we released our first teaser on April 26th, exactly 2 years ago: Rusty Lake – 4 Year Anniversary Teaser Trailer.

In the next devlog we will share why this new gameplay structure turned out to be both a blessing and a curse! Furthermore we will look into some inspirations for this project.

Thank you for reading, hope to see you in the next one!

Rusty Lake

PS. A wishlist helps a lot and.. The Lake turns 6 this week! To celebrate together with all of you lovely people, we’ll have a Big Sale and a special surprise this week across all platforms, so stay tuned for that!

22 responses to “The Past Within – Devlog

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  1. Basil Morris says:

    So so excited for this game, and so happy to see devlogs!

  2. Bruna Chemim says:

    This is so next level!!
    It’s so nice to follow you guys and see how the games are evolving.

    Thank you for all the games that are already out and the many more that’ll come 🙂

  3. How do I leave a like here?

  4. SailorKnightWing says:

    So excited! Thank you for sharing your process with us! But I’m afraid you have a typo in the fifth paragraph: it’s “character,” not “charachter.”

  5. CuriousOwl says:

    Thank you for sharing and all the games! Can’t wait for the next devlog.

  6. Fahad Alqudayyir says:

    I think you are truly professional at this. I love all your games. The best escape game for ios and android of all time.

  7. BE/Paradox - Nasa says:

    wow im cant wait

  8. Seiki says:

    Thanks for all games! Happy birthday Albert 😉

  9. Icy says:

    So excited 🙂

  10. Tima says:

    I just thought of making the cube escape paradox room in real life 🙂 thanks for the inspiration and also I LOVE your work, the stories the game play the graphic, everything is so unique and awesome! love you all!!! <3

  11. Dan Quillan says:

    Hi, It’s always a challenge to change up the format of a beloved game. The 3D aspect scares me because of how unbelievably bland The Room series turned out to be. Although I played the room series only through 3. I played that game after the entire rusty lake experience. Paradox was fantastic and only begged the player to want more. The room games had zero story to speak of and most of the dev. was obviously spent on cgi. I felt like the whole game was unlocking the title sequence for game of thrones… I digress. The rusty lake series is a rich mystery deep in story. The simple graphics or lack of fancy 3D did not detract from the experience. The charm of the drawings , obviously hand created, have so much more convincing soul than any of the Room’s fancy cgi gadgets. Dan Q

  12. Mr.Wang says:

    Love you!!!

  13. Kay says:

    Looking forward to this new game with familiar characters and a new perspective!

  14. Jack Foo says:

    Release ASAP

  15. Sola says:

    Exciting! Waiting for sure!

  16. Benjamin says:

    Oh its already been on my wishlist! Cant wait!

  17. qwqq says:

    waiting for the past within!!!

  18. Alexander says:

    but the idea with the peephole, 3D boxes and interaction with their insides was implemented in “the room” games….

  19. Redwood says:

    I love seeing the real life models y’all use in development. Including more of these would be much appreciated.

  20. Pazcabanne says:

    Amo todo lo que hacen, la música es superlativa.

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