First glimpse into btf's The Berlin Apartment unlocked

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Character-driven first-person adventure unveiled by the creators of Trüberbrook

For their first game, btf released the painstakingly hand-crafted stop-motion adventure, Trüberbrook. Perhaps not surprisingly, for an encore the indie German developer is using a more conventional presentation to tell the century-old story of The Berlin Apartment. 

A handyman is tasked with refurbishing the titular old apartment building in Berlin, while also homeschooling his daughter during the COVID pandemic. During the course of his extensive renovations, the man "digs deeper and deeper into the history of the apartment," and in doing so he discovers relics left behind that "turn out to be silent witnesses – and former companions – of the apartment's former inhabitants." In sharing their stories with his young daughter, together they are able to "experience the dreams and the dangers that haunted them, live the hellos and goodbyes that defined their lives, witness their adventures, [and] uncover memories and mysteries" dating back through the course of an entire century.

Presented not through third-person claymation but charming graphic novel-styled first-person 3D, The Berlin Apartment takes place entirely within the same four walls but across different time periods throughout the city's rich history with its "turbulent past." As you discover new relics connected with former residents, events will play out like a series of short emotional vignettes that each tell their own story, with their own distinct characters, atmospheres, and even genres with "unique gameplay twists" that the developers are keeping under wraps for now, though with the focus always on exploration over "classic, genre-typical puzzles." 

There is no target release date for The Berlin Apartment just yet, but the game can already be wishlisted on Steam, where it will be released for Windows PC, along with console versions for PlayStation and Xbox.