Toulouse & Le Petit Méridional
Platformer game taking place in an old, deteriorating newspaper. The player must put it back in order and save it from oblivion.
Contribution overview
-
Worked on Game Design
-
Designed levels 1 and 2
-
Created the in-engine cutscenes and animations
-
Designed and implemented camera system
-
Designed and implemented bird functionality
-
Programming
Guidelines
-
Highlighting the richness of the old regional press and its significiance for the present day.
-
Linking some events in the game to the present context (2019).
-
Highlighting the collecting of freely available digital archives of old local press by La Région Occitanie.
-
Highlighting the newspaper as an object.
-
Giving life to articles.
Context
At first, Toulouse & Le Petit Méridional was a school project. It was showcased as a prototype to game developpers and got praised for achieving originality and fun whithin tight constraints.
The project then eventually evolved to an internship in collaboration with La Région Occitanie. We worked autonomously and regularly presented progress to the publisher and professionals from the game industry (Yoan Fanise, Game Director, Benjamin Dimanche, Project Manager and Aline Krebs, Game Artist) which was a great learning opportunity.
Contribution
I first focused on designing the core of the game and moved on to production. I particularly enjoyed reflecting on how to improve the game and prototyped some ideas to share them with the team as we went.
I spent most of my time iterating on the camera system, refining the bird gameplay, programming, and creating in-engine cutscenes and animations.
The mechanic I am the most happy about is the bird free movement as it is what ties the core gameplay, exploration and narration together. It also highlights the work of the team in an interesting and cohesive way!
It was important to let the player uncover the newspaper's wonders by themselves. So I used what I had (beautiful sound, art, animation, fun articles, two distinct movement systems) to give them a feeling of true, self-driven discovery.
A good example would be the printing factory in Level 2: