Image Credit: mtb design works, Inc
Have you ever wondered about exploring a 4D world? But the fourth dimension is not time, it’s an actual fourth dimension of space. Ahead of his Real-Time Live! presentation at SIGGRAPH 2025 in Vancouver, we connected with Marc ten Bosch, the contributor of “Miegakure: A Game Where You Interact With a 4D World”. Hear from Marc as he breaks down the inspiration behind the game and what you can look forward to seeing in Vancouver.
SIGGRAPH: We are excited to see you share “Miegakure: A Game Where You Interact With a 4D World” at SIGGRAPH 2025 Real-Time Live!. What inspired you to submit your work to Real-Time Live!?
Marc ten Bosch (MTB): In general, this game is part of a larger body of work about making games that take place in higher dimensions. In 2020, I published a paper at SIGGRAPH about generalizing physics engines to any number of spatial dimensions. It was based on work done for the VR/mobile game “4D Toys”. 4D Toys lets players interact with 4D objects that bounce and roll around as if they were physical objects. 4D Toys started as a side project from Miegakure, which is a fully fledged, highly polished game taking place in a 4D world.
We’ve been developing it for a long time and have shown it before, but it’s been a while since our last public demonstration. When my friend [SIGGRAPH 2025 Real-Time Live! Chair] Inigo Quilez invited me to submit to Real-Time Live!, I thought SIGGRAPH was a great place to restart showing Miegakure publicly. I thought the SIGGRAPH audience would especially appreciate the game’s unique blend of art and science.
SIGGRAPH: Let’s chat about the game itself, “Miegakure”. Tell our audience a little about the game and why you decided to pursue developing it.
MTB: Miegakure is a game that lets you explore and interact with a 4D world. In this game, the fourth dimension is not time! It’s an actual fourth dimension of space that works just like the first three dimensions we are familiar with. For a while games used to be 2D, taking place solely along two directions. Then came computers powerful enough to render 3D graphics. (Of course, the graphics we see, while they are computed in 3D, are displayed on a 2D screen. They are projected down from 3D to 2D in a way that mimics how our eyes perceive the third dimension.)
But what about 4D games? What if there was another direction you could move along in addition to the first three? Trying to answer this question is what that led us to develop this game.
As far as we know, our universe has exactly three spatial dimensions. So we had to come up with a way to display this 4D world so that our three-dimensional brains could comprehend it.
The way we chose is a method that has been popularized in the novella “Flatland”. This novella talks about a 2D square that can only see a 2D cross section of a 3D world. For the square, the third dimension is invisible and mysterious; the square has no concept of it because it is stuck seeing a 2D world. If a 3D object visits the 2D plane it appears to be deforming in a way that looks like an MRI scan. In an MRI what we see appears to be deforming, but we know that we are just taking a different cross-section of the same 3D object.
In Miegakure a similar thing happens, but in one higher dimension: Instead of taking a 2D slice of a 3D object, we are taking a 3D slice of 4D objects.
The gameplay focuses on exploring a 4D world and the consequences of being able to move in 4D. For example, for a 2D being, houses only need four walls. If the doors are locked, there is no way to enter the house. But we 3D beings can see inside the house by just looking at it from the third dimension, and we can reach in and grab whatever is inside and move it outside the house, without opening any doors, to the bemusement of the poor 2D beings!
Similarly, a 4D being can perform miraculous feats such as removing objects from a locked safe without opening it, binding together two rings without breaking them, spying on 3D beings without them knowing, etc.
SIGGRAPH: A unique feature about the game is that it is a 4D world. What was it like to develop systems for modeling, texturing, lighting, and animating the objects that make up the 4D world? Were there any major roadblocks you ran into during this process?
MTB: It is very fun! We get to go through all of computer graphics and generalize many techniques to higher dimensions. This often means having to understand each topic at a deeper level. The math is very fun. The challenge is that it is a lot of work. Figuring out how to transition from 2D games to 3D games took a lot of work by many people over many years. We are singlehandedly doing a similar transition.
One of the main issues is also that, because we want the game to look gorgeous, we have to go beyond generalizing the CG techniques. We can’t just slap some programmer art on them. We had to do extra work or build custom tools so that the artists on the team could contribute their visual talent.
Another issue is that everything we build has to be understandable. Some 4D objects or concepts might look very interesting but might be confusing for new players. So we either move these to later in the game, or carefully simplify them. For example, a 3D slice of a 4D tree might look too different from a regular 3D tree, so we first introduce extruded 3D trees, which do often look like regular 3D trees when sliced.
SIGGRAPH: What role did user testing or playtesting play in shaping the final design of the game features?
MTB: It played a major role. We tested the game a lot, especially in the beginning. We went to shows like PAX and had the game playable over multiple days by hundreds of people. We want the game to be about figuring out how the fourth dimension works and also don’t want to ruin the discovery with a hand-holding tutorial. It’s a hard balance to strike, but we are happy with the result.
Another hard balance was selecting game mechanics which become more interesting when generalized to higher dimensions but are also easy to understand.
SIGGRAPH: What’s next for the 4D world of “Miegakure”? How do you see the game evolving over the next couple of years?
MTB: Finishing the game! It is very far along, and we’ll announce more soon.
SIGGRAPH: What should SIGGRAPH 2025 attendees look forward to most during your session at Real-Time Live! in Vancouver?
MTB: We’ve poured so much work into making the game feel polished, and it will be the first time we publicly show the result!
Before you know it, 4D worlds will be the new norm! Be a part of co-creating our future by joining us in Vancouver or online for SIGGRAPH 2025. Discounted registration rates are still available but not for much longer. Act now and secure your spot today!
Marc ten Bosch is an independent game developer based in San Francisco currently working on Miegakure, a puzzle game that lets you explore and interact with a four-dimensional world. He also released 4D Toys, a physics-based four-dimensional toy box for VR and iOS.
