Wednesdays News

[h2]As you may know, Wednesdays will be out tomorrow![/h2]

This is a good time to remind you of all the accessibility features available in Wednesdays.
Most of the features are adjustable to suit players' needs and preferences. Whether you are an experienced gamer or new to the medium, Wednesdays doesn't focus on performance and is, above all, easy to navigate.

[h3]Here are all the accessibility features taken into account throughout the production of Wednesdays:[/h3]

- Mouse, keyboard and joystick (joystick or D-pad) support;
- Adjustable text size (5 levels);
- Highly legible alternative font (Luciole);
- Manual or automatic text scrolling, with adjustable speed and preview;
- No precision or speed gameplay nor complex sequences;
- Interactive tutorials with clear visual cues;
- Important information transmitted via multiple channels (audio and visual);
- Contrast enhancement and clear identification of interactive elements;
- Colour palettes chosen with different degrees of colour blindness in mind;
- Access to previous dialogue via the diary;
- Replay of any scene that has already been played;
- Game launched in windowed mode;
- Access to accessibility options at launch and at any time during the game;
- Optional drag-and-drop with the possibility to deactivate it;
- Cursor movement speed adjustment (keyboard/joystick);
- Multiple volume controls (music/ambient sound, SFX);
- Option to activate/deactivate animations;
- Automatic save ;
- No sound spatialisation via stereo;
- No images or flashing lights;
- No haptic feedback;
- No complex controls (analogue, voice, gestures);
- No need to hold down buttons;
- No essential information transmitted by colour.

However, please note that Wednesdays does not currently allow:

- Use screen-reading software;
- Reassign game controls.

To find the full list of features in your language, please refer to the ARTE France website:
French
German Spanish

Hey folks!

If you feel like having the soul of an artist, you’re going to LOVE what we’ve cooked for you: we’ve just released a character-maker on Picrew!



You can create your own square-headed avatar in Exaheva’s exquisite style: whether it is cute, threatening, dreamer, devilish, arty or geeky, your avatar can be a reflection of your own being. Or not, whatever you feel like!

Just a detail: you can use your avatar however you want for a personal/non-commercial use. ;)

You can access the Picrew on this link, feel free to share your avatars!!

Hello everyone!

In our last post, we’ve introduced you to our design process by talking about which angle we’ve chosen to tell Tim’ story. Now that things are a little bit clearer on this aspect, let’s speak about another Wednesdays' design feature.

In Wednesdays, you’ll play the majority of the time as Tim’s relatives BUT you’ll be Tim in some specific moments: when you are in Orco Park.



Orco Park is a game within a game. A sort of mise en abyme as the French say. It is a fictional park management sim that Tim played a lot in his childhood. As an adult, he’s kinda in a nostalgic mood and decides to relaunch Orco Park.

Beyond this story-driven reason, Orco Park is the key to unlock Tim’s memories. Each amusement built will allow you to access a specific souvenir that will help you to understand Tim’s past.

But something you may have noticed if you’ve played the demo is that those memories are not in a chronological order. In one scene, you may see Tim as a teenager and in the next one, as a child and after that, as a young adult.

The idea behind it is not only to create a cerebral puzzle. Above all, this choice of game design is here to reflect the traumatic amnesia often observed in victims of child sexual abuse. Memories can be hidden in some deep places of the mind and can rise again years, even decades, after. Thus, each amusement settled in Orco Park acts as a trigger, a signal that unlocks a part of Tim’s memory.

Since we’re talking about triggers, here is another game design aspect of Wednesdays.



Let’s be clear: we absolutely don’t want to shock players in a bad way by luring them into brutal scenes. This is why we didn’t put ANY scene of sexual abuse in the game.

Also, we’ve placed trigger warnings for every memory. Before you choose an amusement to be built, an icon will allow you to know if the upcoming memory is particularly tough to watch or not. Plus, you can have a short description of what to expect. And if you really want to be fully prepared, a complete description will warn you of every aspect that may be shocking depending on your own sensibilities. You can also skip a memory anytime through the Pause menu. As Orco says himself:



Orco will be your guide through Orco Park. He will tell everything you need to know to play properly and we’re sure his caring and supportive nature will make him a great companion to be with!

Hello everyone!

We are the creators of Wednesdays, a colorful narrative game about growing up after being a victim of child sexual abuse.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We know, it’s a tough subject, even a taboo one. But we also know that silence is way more harmful in such situations and from that, we wanted to create a game about it. Not only to break silence around the topic of child sexual abuse and incest but also to allow victims to express themselves.

Starting from that, here comes one crucial question: how do you design a game dealing with child sexual abuse? We’re going to post several mini-talks on Steam to explain how did we manage to create Wednesdays with the issues that such a project inevitably raises.



First thing first, Wednesdays does NOT depict any scene of sexual abuse. There is no frontal scene, suggested scene or even a metaphorical one. The idea of Wednesdays is not to show or, even worse, “play” child sexual abuse but to talk about it and leading players to ask themselves questions about it.

But how can you do that? Well, the first main aspect in Wednesdays’ game design is about who you’re playing. Most games invite you to incarnate someone or something, to embody a character or a figure.

Regarding Wednesdays, this question was crucial. We chose not to let players be the victim. Why that? Because games are about letting players interact and make choices and, by definition, sexual abuse survivors didn’t have any choice. They didn’t consent in any way to what happened to them so we figured that “playing” the victim was not the right choice.

Or course, there was no way we would make a game in which you would embody an abuser. So we thought about another option: play the other ones.



In Wednesdays, instead of playing Timothée, you will play his relatives: his childhood friends, his grand-mother, his father, his ex-girlfriend, his highschool crush… Everyone who was there. Any choice of dialogs you’ll make will come out of their mouth as they discuss with Tim.

The idea here is to lead you to ask yourself: what would you have done in such situations? What could you have seen? Could things have been different?

While Wednesdays cannot bring all the answers by itself, we hope it will raise a lot of questions. By the way, Wednesdays is part of the current Steam Next Fest: feel free to take a look at our page, wishlist the game and test the demo!

Thank you for your support and have a wonderful day!