The World After: the first prototype

After seeing us making two games during the spring of 2020, Guillaume had an idea about a very simple FMV game about lockdown. It was called 2020 and it was a short point and click game. Here’s the pitch: durnig the covid-19 lockdown, a character wants to get out of his appartment but has no mask, no sanitizer and can’t find his phone (you had to fill an online form to go out during covid lockdown in France).

Staying true to the point and click tradition, the character assembles random objects to make a mask, some sanitizer and find his phone and can finally get out. He pitched the idea to us. We weren’t really convinced. In order to make this very short and very silly game, we had to learn a lot of new skills and work maybe for months on something that wasn’t going to be played by anyone.

So we convinced Guillaume to make it bigger, with more characters and more puzzles. The first draft for The World After was written a couple of weeks later.

To make sure that it was possible for us to develop such a game, Guillaume went to Lyon and we shot a few scenes in the park next to my place. The goal was simple: make the character take some objects in the scene, and make sure that these items disappear from the screen once the character has taken them.

It wasn’t that easy, but it turned out OK after all. We could now start the production of The World After with confidence.