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AR MARE
AR MARE
Trapped in a lighthouse that takes an unhealthy obsession to her, its keeper is forced to tend to the place while uncovering the mysterious deaths of
its previous keepers.
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Horror, narrative, puzzles
Unreal
October 2024 - February 2025
10 people (2 Game Designers)
AVAILABLE IN FEBRUARY 2025
CONCEPTION AND RESEARCH
Ar-Mare’s narrative is its drive. The game takes place in an island far from the coasts of Brittany, in 1920. It follows a 40 year old fisher-woman turned light-keeper, Morgan Le Duienn, as she uncovers the secrets of the lighthouse she’s trapped in.
The conception phase lasted for about a month. During it, I did a maximum of research about not only the conditions of life for light-keepers during that period of time, but also about female light-keepers, their personality, their salary, their place in society and in this line of work.
In order to justify the game’s setting, doing researchs on Brittany, its customs and legends was also primordial. This allowed me to focus on the kind of story we wanted to tell:
a story of women, hardships, and solitude.
My brainstorm pages with the early concept art of Morgan
In order for the vertical slice of the game to make sense, I designed the storyboard for the whole game as well as chronological strips.
NARRATIVE DESIGN & WRITING
During the pre-production phase, I am able to work more on the concrete ways with which the game will transmit narration to the player :
Flowchart of the ways the main themes will be transmitted
- environmental storytelling and props,
- text collectibles,
- a diary,
- chatter,
- traversal puzzles.
Through non-interactibles such as props, I want the player to get the hint of a story in a mere glance. For example, Morgan’s room will be littered with her favorite books, her pipe, her sewing kit... while the ambiance in her old duo’s room will be much different (see frame below).
As our main character will carry around a diary that she updates every in-game day, I am writing the text in it to further tell the player what her state of mind is without her telling us herself, which would be out of character.
The texts she’ll find around (notes from other light-keepers, newspaper bits, ominous messages) will be used to further the story and Morgan’s understanding of her surroundings.
Audio like music and voice recordings on gramophones will also be used for horror and narrative effects.
But more than with readable text, I also want to experiment with chatter. Morgan is alone in the lighthouse, so she’ll talk to herself: allowing the player a glimpse into her thoughts.
NARRATIVE PUZZLE DESIGN
Traversal puzzles inspired by classic survival horror games are also an integral part of Ar-Mare. They have to be intuitive while adding narrative flavoring to simple mechanics.
Below, the objective in this ‘music box’ puzzle is to find the missing poem pieces in the environment, then return to the box and place the pieces in the right order to get a key to progress the story. I am designing this poem from the lighthouse's point of view, to shed
some light on the fate of the previous keepers, while hinting at Morgan's possible future fate.
Once all the pieces have been placed in the correct order, this is the resulting poem that is readable.
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