Inside the IGF Student Competition: Kid Nap

In a new series, GameCareerGuide is talking to student developers who have submitted games to this year’s Independent Games Festival. In this interview, Sylvain Loe-Mie discusses Kid Nap, a survival-horror game made by students at ENJMIN -- The Graduate School of games and interactive media in France. In the game, the player becomes a small child wandering his house at night, facing his fear of the dark and armed with a flashlight. Says Loe-Mie: The idea is to show the player how a kid feels walking in a place he knows well, here, his house, plugged into darkness. We wanted to show the imaginary and nightmarish world hidden behind the darkness. How would a child feel, walking across every room without light in his house, facing every monster created by his imagination, under his bed or in the cabinet? The flashlight forces the child to see and face directly his fears and is the only way to make them disappear. By including this element, we tried to give Kid Nap an “initiatory rite” aspect. What was your goal in developing the game? We developed Kid Nap during our courses at ENJMIN; the game is first of all an exercise. We had to create it in three months, with a team of five. The game had to be playable, and had to make the player understand his goal within 10 minutes. It was a real challenge for us to create immersion in 10 minutes. It was also an opportunity for us to experiment the mechanisms of gameplay, such as pushing away an enemy in order to progress, or playing with time limit. It’s nice to be able to point to the game in our CVs, which will maybe help us during job interviews. Tell us more about what happens with the flashlight, both artistically and in terms of gameplay and player emotion. In terms of gameplay, the flashlight functions as weapon. It allows the player to defend himself against his fear of the dark. We want to find a “weapon” which also plays a role in the game ambiance (we did not want the player to feel too strong -- a revolver wouldn’t have been relevant, for example). In our opinions this “weapon” should be interesting artistically and coherent with the background about the child and about being afraid of the dark. Furthermore, it also forces the child to see and face directly his fear. It's a dilemma for the player. You can eliminate the fear created from your imagination only by using the flashlight, while you see them clearly which might frighten you. It's with this dilemma that we want the player to continue in the game. What games (or non-game things) influenced Kid Nap? Our main influences were “survival horror” games like Forbidden Siren. We were also influenced by Silent Hill, in which there is a huge work on the stage setting and on the rhythm with sorts of “dramaturgic silences,” moments when nothing happens and the only purpose is to increase fear. We were also influenced by some films such as L’Orphelinat by Juan Bonito Bayona and l’Échine Du Diable by Guillermo Del Toro, which deal with childish fears with a great work on frightening “clair-obscurs.” Tell us one interesting thing that you learned in developing the game. Making a game based on ambiance isn’t easy because people are not sensitive to the same fears, and because the gameplay has to be deserving of the ambiance to increase immersion. [An extended version of this interview is available on GameCareerGuide.com, Gamasutra’s sister site for information and advice about education and careers in the game development industry.]