Devlog

Science for all, fun above all

#9 Designing characters

In Exographer, two types of character were to be distinguished: the Natitans, repositories of knowledge and inspired by real scientists who discovered elementary particles (see devlog #4), and Ini, the player character, an exographer sent to investigate a mysterious distress signal emitted by the Natitans. Ini’s design had to be completely different from that of…
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#8 Composing the music

Exographer’s music was scored by Yann van der Cruyssen, author of the Stray and Seasons after Fall soundtracks, among others. Yann confesses that producing a soundtrack for a game with retro graphics is always a tricky business. The sound has to be neither too old school nor too modern. In fact, this isn’t the first…
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#7 Discovering particles

In Exographer, you’ll spend a (small) part of your time searching for new elementary particles in images closely resembling those manipulated by physicists at CERN or elsewhere. And you don’t even need any prior knowledge! The game is designed to help you gradually get to grips with these seemingly complex concepts.  In the example above,…
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#6 Varying puzzles

To repair the giant machines of the Exographer world, you’ll have to solve puzzles. To design them, our game designer Pierre-Alban Ferrer had to meet various design objectives: simple or advanced learning of a power (see devlog #3), checking players’ skills, using the camera, illustrating mechanics specific to science… Puzzles based on ray redirection, for…
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#5 Designing absurd materials

In Exographer, your enemies are four materials with strange properties. One of our challenges was to represent these so-called « absurd » materials. Inherent to the gameplay, they block progress, and some are even deadly! Progressive mastery of the powers (see Devlog #3) enables you to overcome them. To ensure that they conveyed the right visual message,…
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#4 A not-so-unknowm civilization?

In Exographer, you follow in the footsteps of nine enigmatic academics from a forgotten civilisation. These ‘Natitans’ once built colossal machines to discover the inner structure of matter… But they all seem to have disappeared, leaving behind a kind of testament.  Like absolutely everything else in the game, these characters are directly inspired by science.…
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#3 The logic behind power-ups

In Exographer, the character acquires powers that are directly inspired by the interactions between elementary particles. This key element of the game is also a major design challenge, which can be summed up as follows: How do you create a fun experience while staying true to the science? The first step was to gather as…
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#2 Taking and keeping pictures

In Exographer, you can take a picture whenever you like. That means in the middle of an animation or power use, or even a lift mouvement.The save system lives within the pictures you take. Your last picture is your save, and you can take as many pictures as you like !  That led to two…
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#1 Graphical inspirations

In Exographer, the player’s progress is punctuated by the discovery of elementary particles. Most of Exographer’s levels are graphically inspired by the actual scientific locations where these particles were discovered. We thought this was all the more appropriate given that these places are often gigantic, marvelous and photogenic. These include, among others: In the very…
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#0 Reveal becomes Exographer

We are thrilled to announce that the game we conceived under the codename REVEAL will be released in Fall 2024, edited by Abylight Studio. It will be available for PC and consoles (Switch, Playstations and XBOX). REVEAL was conceived in the framework of the (French) Science and Videogame academic chair of École polytechnique, under the…
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