Souriez. is videogame in a sci-fi universe in a distant future. French renaissance culture and neons coexist under a perpetual night sky, in a hypocritical society.
The player incarnates a mercenary whose job is to humiliate people to «kill» them socially, by using observation and planning skills.
On this project I worked on the worldbuilding with the whole team first, then after we had a solid base for the universe I worked on game design defining the core gameplay with another game designer, and finally I worked on establishing the scenario and the dialogues for the game.
What went right
What went wrong
What I learned
I managed to make characters with unique personalities and communicate those to the player through a few lines of dialogue.
I also managed to make dialogues fit in the Renaissance atmosphere. We created a very fleshed out worldbuilding, and a unique universe, with a game design that uses the specificities of this universe.
I spent a lot of time trying to use the best vocabulary and phrasing to recapture the atmosphere of Renaissance, sometimes spending far too muh time on details which wouldnt have any bearing on most players' experience.
This project made me realize that each feature of a game has a target, which is sometimes the game's whole target or a fraction of it.
In this example I spent a lot of time polishing an aspect of the game that would make an impact only for the most nitpicky players.
I learned that it's important to know who's the target of each feature to determine it's importance.
