“I’m not a game designer. I’m a programmer,” says Cukia Kimani, one half of the South African dev team on Semblance, a game that demonstrates what might happen if Super Meat Boy were let loose in a world made of Play-Doh.

In Semblance you move from side to side. Your avatar is a squishy pound of flesh with tears flowing down its face. You can flatten the protagonist from either side—making it thinner or smaller—and you can hammer it against the walls of its environment, creating jump spaces and holes.

You collect orbs, smash your way through barriers, and sneak under spike awnings that send you back to the start screen if you touch them. Semblance feels like a game you should be paying for, but it’s not finished. It’s on display at “A Maze. / Johannesburg,” a South African festival for indie developers and digital artists.