WHAT'S ORPHELINAT?
For a month, my team and I decided to design a project, where we had to deal with the subject of victims of history, or how to represent them in a video game.
We then turned to a horror game, telling the story.
Some data :
3
People on the project
1
Month to make the project
Documentation :
In order to nourish our subject, we have been particularly interested in the cases of abuse carried out on children in Catholic orphanages around the years 50-60. The testimonies are numerous and it was not difficult to find resources to try to imagine what the life of a victim was like in this post-war era…
Synopsis :
It is a horror game where you play as Adam, a post-war orphan who spent his childhood in a French Catholic orphanage in the 1950s.
Some twenty years later, Adam receives a letter from a forgotten old friend, Abel, who reveals he committed suicide due to the memories of being raped by the priest of the orphanage. Determined to prove Father Maxime’s guilt, Adam returns to the place of his past…
The goal of the game is to progress through the orphanage of Adam’s youth, to uncover what happened to his lost friend and to discover more about himself.
LEVEL DESIGN
A - Documentation :
It was important for me to reference real buildings to get a kind of realism in the place.
So I did some research, either for plans like below.
I was also inspired by the orphanage of the series: The Queen’s Gambit who allowed to have several angles of the building through the scenes!
B - Prototyping :
I. Plan :
The plan has a certain symmetry to avoid the player getting lost, and to have a central place (the hall) that will be quiet and where nothing scary will happen.
I imagined the path that the player will have to follow according to what could be a typical day spent in this Catholic orphanage.
Thus, once the welcome is over, the plot goes like this:
- Dormitories → Waking up the children;
- Showers → After waking up;
- Classroom → Classes begin;
- Chapel → Mass;
- Priest’s room → After Mass, the main place in which Father Maxime carried out his crimes;
The cellar and the upper floor are two places that are impossible to reach in the game phase, the first because of a securely locked door, the second because of a cave-in.
II. Blockout :
Now that the plan is validated by the team, we have to see if it works, and for that, nothing better than to make a blockout to get an idea of the dimensions of the rooms and the walkthrough.
When the scale seemed to be correct, and the layout of the rooms also, we could attack the artistic part and obtain a much more realistic level.
III. Lighting:
The sound and visual atmosphere will have an extremely important impact, especially for a horror game. I then worked on the lighting and post-processing to get a result that suited us!
This part was important to realize before all the staging, because we wanted to get something very dark. We had to be sure of our parameters before doing anything else, otherwise, retouching would have been necessary but complicated on a deadline of 1 month.
C - Creation :
I’m going to detail the different steps of the level design, whether it’s the objectives of each room, as well as the cinematics that I made.
I. Home :
The home is a tutorial, where he will be able to use all the mechanics of the game (open the door, and zoom on an object to interact with it).
[Walkthrough Flow] :
Find class photo → Cinematic (Monster laughs → Monster appears → Monster flees) → Dorms unlocked.
II. Dormitories :
For this room, our intention was above all to introduce the real antagonist of our story, without making him appear without reason.
This is why we chose the dormitories. At first, the crying Adam hears guides him to the room and then stops when he arrives. They are only heard again when Adam goes to the bed. They stop for good once the creature appears in the hallway.
These cries are those of the children victims of Father Maxime’s abuse. The latter used to make his nightly rounds, and so as not to attract his attention, the children of the orphanage held back their tears when they heard him coming.
[Walkthrough Flow] :
Crying is heard → Arrival at the dormitory door → Crying is silenced → Find the stuffed animal → Flashbacks → Find the bed → Adam sits on it → Crying is heard louder → Antagonist appears → Crying is silenced → Player is paralyzed → Monster passes through the hallway → Player can move again → Bathroom unlocked.
III. Bathroom :
After the monster appears in the hallway, we want the player to be on guard as he walks in the direction of the monster. Will he jump on it?
The tension will then rise again when he has to open the bathroom door and Abel in his demonic form comes out.
[Walkthrough Flow] :
Entering the bathroom → Opening the toilet door → Abel pops up and runs away laughing → Finding engravings → Class unlocked.
IV. Classroom :
The first flashback is directly linked to the room, allowing Adam to relive his memories in a tangible way, bringing the player closer to the truth and breaking the frame of memory to approach reality. The flashbacks evolve with tactile, auditory, and visual stimuli.
An obvious clue to the identity of the first monster lies in its passivity, the bathroom sequence with the engraved initials, and the fact that it is in Abel’s place in the classroom. This should lead the player to realize that this shapeless creature is Abel, though this will only be confirmed at the end of the game.
[Walkthrough Flow] :
Watch Abel → Interact with desk → Adam sits down → Cinematic → Flashback of class → Message appears on board → Chapel bell rings → Chapel unlocked.
V. Chapel :
The room that will make the tension and uneasiness grow. Through the flashback of the altar, the player will understand that there is something disturbing with Father Maxime (which he will have already seen through the photos and the painting).
[Walkthrough Flow] :
Entering the chapel → Search for the altar with the bible → Fixed flashback of the mass → Return to reality → The priest’s room is unlocked.
VI. Priest's Room - The horror of the truth :
For Father Maxime’s room, the goal was to create a place that contradicts the idea of trauma.
A sequence is triggered when the player enters the room. Adam sweeps the room with his eyes, which will transform to appear dreamlike and beautiful. The player can move around the room, making the memories more real. Objects can be observed but not analyzed, and observation will be interrupted, reflecting Adam’s trauma.
After observing enough objects, a flashback will show Adam that Father Maxime has hidden a journal somewhere in the room.
Once the diary is found and read, the room will change dramatically, revealing a hellish vision. This represents the horror and shock Adam felt when he learned the truth about Father Maxime’s repeated rapes over the years.
The reassuring atmosphere, reflecting the trust sexual abusers try to establish with their victims, transforms into hell, representing the reality of the atrocities carried out.
[Walkthrough Flow] :
Arrival in the room → Normal → Eye sweep → Dream room → Door behind Adam disappears → Player searches the room → After 3 or 4 objects analyzed → Flashback of Maxime hiding his diary → Finding the diary → Flashbacks → Infernal vision room → Second door leading to the corridor opens.
VII. The corridor of horror :
The cinematic continues, and the rhythm becomes more and more accentuated. The pressure will be at its maximum. He will have to watch, helplessly, the red eyes of the priest coming forward—the source of all the trauma of his character.
The priest is here to punish the child who broke into the Father’s room. That’s why Adam doesn’t die; he loses consciousness and wakes up in the cellar of the orphanage.
The end of the game.