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モノリト MONOLIT (Exchange project | July 2014)

Puzzle (Concept) | 1 player

Role: Game Designer

モノリト Monolit is a textless, poetic and abstract game in which moving is the only thing the player does: exploring by moving, solving puzzles by moving, having fun by moving. The player controls a "cell" looking over a strange place, trying to reach the "monoliths" on which this world is based to activate them. But each monolith is filled with puzzles, and there is only one way to interact with the world's elements: by making movement choreographies. Some will make elements shrink. Some will push them aside. Some will make them turn on themselves. But for all these choreographies, the only way for the player to learn them is by observing their environment.

During summer 2014, a few of us were invited to Japan to spend a month at Trident College of Information Technology, in Nagoya. When we arrived with two other students from my class, the Trident's teachers asked us to come up with a concept within two weeks for the Japan Game Awards 2014. The theme this year was 動き ("to move"),  and our answer was モノリト Monolit (even though we could not enter the contest, as we were not Japanese). Back then, we were pretty inspired by poetic indie games and also wanted to create something that would evoke the idea of "flow" when playing. Moreover, since two weeks was quite a long time to create a concept for three people, we imagined the whole narrative of the game and all the choreographies (their effects and how to do them) that would appear in the game if we were to develop it one day. One of us also did a short prototype so we could give a better idea of what we had in mind.

When we finally presented the concept to the teachers, they stated that occidental games are very different from Japanese games, but they still seemed very enthusiastic about game nonetheless.

Teammates: Isabelle Lallemand (Game Designer), Gwendal Reuzé (Game Design, Programmer)

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