A612

A little game we did in a 48h jam at Monpellier, France.

The theme we got was "Iconic characters of Occitany" and we picked randomly : 

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

- Edouard-Alfred Martel

This game narrates the life of Saint-Exupery in three periods : his childhood and the loss of his brother, his years as a Novelist and the last period is World War II, when he died.

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Game Design Post-Mortem

Game System

A612 is a contemplative game in which the player will explore planets, echoing the Little Prince of St Exupéry, and collect crystals to revive memories of St Exupéry’s life onto the planet. In order to find these crystals the player will have to dig into the planets, this mechanic is echoing to Edouard Martel. We tried to create a poetic game, bringing naration elements by the gameplay. We wanted to narrate the life of St Exupery in three stages, and therefore three planets. The first referring to his childhood, it ends with the death of his brother when Antoine was only 17 years old. The second planet refers to his life as an author, including his works « The Little Prince » and « Night Flight ». Finally the third planet, refers to the Second World War in which St Exupery was pilot before getting lost at sea on a return flight from a mission. On this planet we wanted to ban all gameplay, the player will fly over the planet before moving away in the sky, representing the powerlessness of St Exupery facing the war until his death.

Mechanic

We made the choice to keep a simple mechanic because we wanted to accentuate the game on the atmosphere and the storytelling. The main mechanic is to dig the planets to collect the crystals, echoing the story of Edouard Martel but also, dig into someone’s life is an expression meaning that one seeks to know more about this person, echoing our experience of discovering the experience of Antoine de St Exupery.

What has not been working

The number of elements to revive on each planet is one. It is indeed impossible to set a narrative context with too few elements, the relationship to the life of Antoine de St Exupéry being in this case less obvious if the player is not warned.

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This game was made with :

Draina : Here

Uxross : Here

Angelo Pinho : Here

Pierre Pldr : Here