Since the experience is what matters, what are your principles on gameplay?

We really don't want to frustrate the player. For instance, we're very careful to put items in sight to avoid pixel hunting. When we get to the end of development, and try to adjust the game's difficulty, we tend to lean toward making puzzles slightly easier. And we also refuse to artificially increase the length of our games — by relying on backtracking, for instance. I prefer players to find our games short but good, rather than getting bored before the end.

The highly non-linear nature of your games also affects the perceived length, doesn't it?

Definitely. In Return to Mysterious Island, there were different ways of doing almost everything and several optional parts, and so that made the game appear twice as short as if it had been completely linear. So we changed our design philosophy a bit. In VOYAGE, the game was very open and many puzzles could be solved in the order the player chose, but... by the end of the game, everything had to be done. This enables us to leave much freedom to the players, and yet be sure that they'll see all we've worked on.

I must confess that the complexity this introduced caught us slightly off-guard. This type of development means having to keep track of lots of conditions, and makes bugs with the game logic more likely to appear.

I guess players appreciate that freedom.

Actually, not all of them do. There are people who enjoy freedom, who don't want to receive help or to feel like they have to stick to a single path. But there are also many players who like more direction. This is especially true of people who play with a walkthrough close at hand, consult it as soon as they get stuck, and want to follow a list of steps; we know those people felt slightly lost in VOYAGE. We have to try to please both types of players, and that's why we're experimenting with a slightly different style in Destination: Treasure Island.

Doesn't that non-linearity also entail more static plots? And yet you have some experience in plot-driven games, since your designer, Alexis Lang, worked on Salammbô.

It's true that when we work in a very open world, the game is less plot-driven. But we don't have a single model that must be applied every time. It all depends on the game and settings, and you'll see that Destination: Treasure Island differs from Return to Mysterious Island or VOYAGE in that regard.

The first full-fledged Kheops game was Return to Mysterious Island. How was this project chosen? The appeal of the 2005 Jules Verne celebrations?

The reason why we did RTMI is that DreamCatcher had been pleased with Mystery of the Nautilus and were looking for people interested in making another game based on Jules Verne's books. So at first it wasn't at all because we were expecting a lot of publicity around Verne for the 100th anniversary of his death. Actually, DreamCatcher didn't know about that, and we're the ones who told them. But it's certain that the anniversary prompted us to make VOYAGE on the heels of RTMI.

Beyond that, Verne's stories lend themselves well to adventure games — as do Stevenson's and Poe's that we used in Destination: Treasure Island. And it really makes us happy if playing the game can prompt people to read the book. We know of a person who had played Return to Mysterious Island, had really enjoyed it, and decided to buy the book afterwards — and wrote to us saying he appreciated our work even more now that he saw how we had worked from it. Those who constantly put down computer games would do well to reflect on such examples. It's silly to oppose different media; they can complement one another.

So you'll go on working from books?

Certainly, but don't think that it's because it's easier; I feel it's as much work to use an existing world as start from scratch. We have to use books in the public domain, but then there's no special rule as to what we'll work with. It depends on what we're interested in, and on whether the story can lend itself to the sort of game we want to do and to the budget we have. Around the World in 80 Days, for instance, is not something we would have done.

Because there are too many locations?

Exactly, that would have been too expensive. We try to work with stories that can be set within a limited space, with natural barriers such as islands, a Moon crater, or a house. That way, rather than letting the player feel the budget constraints by constantly bumping into invisible walls, the limited space becomes a natural feature of the game, which is ultimately less frustrating.

Whenever discussions arise as to whether our games are vast enough, Alexis is quick to point out that you can watch a play set in a single location, and that doesn't make its plot less good. So we don't feel that having a limited number of locations is a problem, as long as they're used well. And we'd rather decide from the beginning that we'll have to work within a limited space, rather than create as many locations as we feel like and then have to end the game halfway through the intended story because we've run out of money.




Speaking of your Jules Verne games, what was the meaning of VOYAGE's concluding cinematic? Just an Easter egg, or more?

We thought it was a nice little reference to have VOYAGE end just like Return to Mysterious Island started. And it also left the door open for a sequel we had thought about, starring Michel Ardan and Captain Nemo. I'm very fond of Ardan; he is a rather original character, both in terms of appearance and personality, and I believe we remained true to the book. But from a marketing point of view, he's not very interesting — less than, say, blander-but-cuter Mina. So I don't think that sequel will ever happen.

You said there was no opportunism involved in making those two games. Can you really say the same of The Secrets of Da Vinci?

When we started work on that game, the buzz around The Da Vinci Code was just starting in France; as a matter of fact, the designers of Totm hadn't read the book when they decided to make the game. What happened is just that they went to Amboise and visited the Clos Lucé [the manor where Leonardo spent his last years, which is now a museum], and thought that could be made into good game material (just like they had the idea for ECHO after going to Lascaux on holiday).

Obviously, there was some opportunism involved in the way the game was marketed, but not overly so. Most reviews noted that, despite what the outward impression may be, the game was not a rip-off and stood on its own, and that is was all the better if the release of the movie could attract more people to it.

The same sort of thing happened for Destination: Treasure Island. We were looking for new ideas, and the art director bought the book for his nephew, and thought that it might make a good game. And then, a month after work had begun, we learnt that the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels were being filmed and that our game would be released between films #2 and #3.

If those circumstances can help sell our games, we're not going to complain. But we don't choose our projects based on what will be featured in the news at the time of the release. I guess we're just getting quite good at feeling the Zeitgeist or else we're just very lucky.

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