Prototype of a chapter of a narrative game, “Le Moulin des Grainettes” (“The Seedlings’ Wheelhouse”) is a point & click game telling the story of Jean, a middle-aged Parisian salaryman, who finds himself forced to spend a night in an abandonned wheelhouse… that is actually not empty, as he meets Épi’Fanny, a small creature, part of the people of the wheelhouse, the seedlings.
The prototype available on itch.io (only available in French for now) allows the player to play the second chapter of the story, out of a total of seven.
“Le Moulin des Grainettes” was a project built in a week, for a student project for the schools Gobelins / Cnam-Enjmin.
With my team, we:
- Visited a wheelhouse for inspiration
- Defined the original concept
- Defined the world and setting
- Defined the characters
- Built a storyline and its different chapters
- Defined the details of the chapter we wanted to fully develop
- Wrote the details of that chapter and the interactions we wanted to allow the player
- Wrote all the dialogue
- Recorded the voices of all characters
- Built all of this into a playable demo available on itch.io
I was personally in charge of the technical handling of the dialogue (implementing inkle’s narrative scripting language ink), of the precise definition of the character “Pavot-Rôti” (to whom I then lent my voice), and of the writing of a key scene.
“Le Moulin des Grainettes” is a project we’re particularly proud of: In a week, we think we managed to create a game full of humor, visually pleasing, and with a clear storyline. We now have to define if we want to continue this story beyond the prototyping stage.