Video games portraying delicate subjects often open up discourse surrounding their themes. Pierre Corbinais is familiar with games such as these, writing the narrative for games like Haven and Bury Me, My Love; in his review for the latter, Matt describes it as being a game that should be mandatory for all to place because it encourages us to see the most desperate humans through the same lens we see our loved ones. With Wednesdays, Corbinais is raising awareness of sexual violence within the family and encouraging victims to speak up. The game launches later this month and supports English, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese languages.
This interactive visual novel allows players to decipher the silence of victims and recognize the signs of sexual abuse. The story is told through a victim’s fragmented memories, with a contrasting art style showing a theme park management sim that represents childhood.
Please note: The game is not recommended for anyone under 18. It contains no scenes of sexual assault. Content warnings are available for each memory, and each can be seen in summary form.
“I really wanted to create an artwork, but with the aim of raising the players’ awareness,” explains Wednesdays’ creator Corbinais in a press release. “Incest is one of the rare subjects where simply talking about it is already a step forward. I’ve seen it all around me: the effect is immediate.”
Wednesday follows Timothée, a victim of familial sexual assault. Here is a description of its narrative from publisher ARTE France:
In a retro 2D style, as a tribute to the video games of the 1990s, an empty island awaits Timothée, the main character of Wednesdays. Orco, the orca-headed mascot and guide, invites him to build a theme park on the island. In each of the attractions, Timothée recovers a memory, from his life as a young boy to his first steps as an adult. All these fragments of memory are linked to the incest he suffered each Wednesday afternoon for many years.
He rediscovers his past twenty years later, and with it an endless stream of questions: How could this have happened? How could anyone have seen and spoken? How was he affected when he grew up?
Other scenes resurface: afternoons at school, a funeral, a first time, a bus ride with his best friend, a confession that’s been postponed and postponed… In each of these, the player takes on the role of a new character from Timothée’s entourage, in an attempt to unravel his memory. Fragmentary, non-chronological memories, reflecting the way traumatic memory works.
Wednesdays features two art styles with intentional contrast. Designed by Exaheva, the memory universe’s art style draws inspiration from comics and graphic novels. The universe of childhood games is designed by Nico Nowak, who embraces the upbeat and colourful style of ’90s pixel art management games.
During the memory scenes (illustrated by Exaheva), you make dialogue decisions by playing the role of someone around Timothée. Corbinais did this intentionally: “I wanted to enrich the narrative and avoid linearity. If the player wants to know everything about Timothée’s incest, one scene will give him all the answers. But he can also move on, skip some scenes, choose what he wants to hear about.”
Developed by Pierre Corbinais and The Pixel Hunt, and published by ARTE France, Wednesdays will be released for PC/Mac (Steam, itch.io) on March 26.
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