It's midday in Issegeac

My aim is not to theorize about video games in general, nor about poetics. Nor is it to invent some universal rules that govern the imaginary.

All I'm trying to do is study, through a few games that have had a personal impact on me, and at a young age when the personal imagination is under construction for the rest of one's life, what effects the aesthetic, thematic, poetic and technical choices of these games have had on me.

To discover why they fascinated me at the time and why, thirty years on, they continue to inhabit me and influence the way I look at other works, as well as at the world itself and at life itself.

Prominent among them is La Secte Noire – developed and published by Lankhor in 1990 for the Amstrad CPC.

Let's take a look at some of its locations:

Le Bourg d'Issegeac (The Village of Issegeac)

>examine cat

Bad omen

>take cat

Don't touch!

>examine fountain

Fresh water flows

>examine water

It's clear

>search water

What a busybody!

>drink water

You've quenched your thirst

>open door

Very funny!

>examine floor

Nothing's lying around

I remember a poem, by Maurice Carême or Prévert or whoever, which I discovered as a teenager, probably in a school textbook, and which made an impression on me.

It's midday

in Loctudy.

It's Sunday, the bells are ringing.

There's no one in the harbor.

It's the kind of hyper-naïve, sweet poem that looks like it's been cut out to end up in a French textbook – in the same way that the great sentences of great men, such as Victor Hugo or Paul Nizan, have always given me the impression that they had no other purpose than to end up feverishly copied onto the front page of every sentimental high-school girl's diary, and probably onto her Facebook wall today.

Well. Issegeac. Note that in so-called "real life" the village is called Issigeac. Is this a typo or something intentional? It doesn't really matter.

There's no interaction with the cat, strictly speaking, or with the other scenery elements. This reinforces the impression of solitude that opens the game, and will last throughout the first part. There are no passers-by, no villagers, no NPCs. The cat is "mute", limited to its role as a bad omen – and quite cute, too.

Périgord is a natural region and former province of France, which corresponds roughly to the current Dordogne department, now forming the northern part of the administrative region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. It is divided into four areas called the Périgord Noir (Black), named so for the truffles that can be found there, the Périgord Blanc (White), for chalk cliffs and quarries, the Périgord Vert (Green), for forests and forestry and the Périgord Pourpre (Purple), for wine and viticulture. 

Issegeac is supposed, according to the game instructions, to be in the Périgord Noir (black Périgord). The real commune of Issigeac, on the other hand, is located in Périgord Pourpre (purple Périgord). Purple, black: this is the realm of mourning, of the occult, of darkness.

My parents took us on vacation to the Périgord in 1998. I wasn't expecting anything special, but in the back of my mind, "Périgord Noir" evoked something very rural, very remote, deserted, mysterious, and obviously the tourist spots we visited were nothing like that. But it's also true that tourists are never allowed anywhere near the real stuff.

The game starts at 6pm, hence perhaps the yellowish light that envelops everything. Somewhere between comforting (it's aperitif time) and approaching threat. At the same time, it could be midday (in Loctudy), and we're in a kind of non-time, sleepiness and even non-life, a stasis that only a black cat barely disturbs.

*

Les Ruines du Pendu (The Hanged Man's Ruins)

>examine bridge

In ruins

>open door

It resists

>break door

An act of vandalism that can be costly!

>examine door

It's armored

We can't really talk about "toponymy" here. We'd have to find a new term for screen names in adventure games with static illustrations. Room names are as much toponymy as a hint to the player, or a joke, or pure poetry.

Toponymy – I'm going to use that term anyway – contributes as much as illustrations or sounds to the atmosphere created by the game, to the imaginary constructions that the player builds, consciously or unconsciously, while playing.

Why the "Ruines du Pendu"? We don't care, of course, but the effect is there. Toponymy provides micro-information on the game world, without expanding on it. To artificially (but effectively) extend the mystery. To give the player something to gnaw on. To let the player create meaning, without realizing it.

A door that has no role in the story, that can't be opened.

A bridge in ruins, impassable.

It's better this way than if we'd been able to open the door and cross the bridge.

*

Le Pont du Silence (The Bridge of Silence)

>examine water

It's muddy

>search water

What an idea

>examine bridge

It's solid

>examine tree

It's very ordinary

>climb tree

I don't like climbing

>examine ground

Are you an admirer?

The water is muddy; evil is present in and around the village. It stains everything.

The silence... Memories of my solitary walks. The world is silent or almost silent. It's human chatter and human noises that make us forget it, on a daily basis.

In fact, natural sounds – running water, wind in the trees, rain and thunder, locusts singing, etc. – could be considered part of silence, the opposite of which would be the human voice. Even that of a single human talking to himself, mentally.

This silence of nature is distressing, can be distressing, in any case, not because it would be the sign of our solitude, and therefore of our greater vulnerability to any danger, but above all because it is the sign of the silence, the emptiness, that reigns within ourselves; beneath the incessant chatter that, even alone, we maintain.

*

L'Antre du Malin (The Devil's Den)

 (

>take shovel

You feel like working? 

>examine skull

Unrevealing examination

>examine grave

It's been desecrated

>search grave

Only a skull remains

>take skull

Above all, don't touch it

>examine shovel

Abandoned by the gravedigger

In the Catholic Church, mauve is at least the color of trial, of waiting, but also of mourning – that's why the priest wears a mauve chasuble for funerals. An excellent choice of color for this room, then.

Some interesting details:

The shovel is a different color, a remarkable one, let's say, and it leaves – intentionally or not – the player thinking that there's something to do with this object.

Similarly, only one grave bears a cross of the same color. Here too, is the intention to make the player believe that there are actions to be attempted on this object?

Why can't we touch the skull? As you can see, nobody knows, not even the game designers, and that's just fine. This way, too, of addressing the player, in a mode other than purely informative, has an impact on the way the game is experienced. After the black cat, it's the game's "narrator" himself, a narrator with an unknown and unknowable identity, who addresses the player as if he were some kind of oracle or guide.

*

L'Impasse du Nord (North Dead End)

>examine water

It's water!

>examine tree

Weird???

>examine soil

No indication

>searchwater

Not useful

>climb tree

Careful, it slips

>enter water

Too risky

Uniform, heavy, threatening sky. Autumn romanticism, memories of childhood and teenage walks in this kind of weather, this kind of luminosity. The tree is much brighter than the rest, just as sometimes a powerful sun accompanies very heavy skies.

Here too, the poetry of names. Impasse du Nord, Chapelle du Nord.

As good as Quai des Brumes or whatever.

The skies in La Secte Noire really get to me. What's behind those rocks? What does that pale sky illuminate?

A number of times, as a child and as an adult, I've dreamt of this game or others; dreamt that I'd discovered, accidentally, unexpectedly, unhoped-for, places never visited before, banal or magnificent, but which finally gave me a few more secrets. And even if they didn't, discovering a new room was an experience of almost mystical intensity.

*

Les Terres brûlées (The Scorched Lands)

 (

Décor and colors in stark contrast to the previous screen.

It's like being in a dream, changing from one place to another in just two steps.

The difference is that in an adventure game, you can go back, come back and so on.

*

A tree branch opens up a tunnel in the rock, which in turn leads to a sort of castle courtyard, from where you can access a crossroads in the "mountain". The succession of locations is almost unrepresentable in reality. The impression of onirism is reinforced. In a game like Orphée : Voyage aux enfers, this is the rule from start to finish; you go from a jungle to a council estate from one screen to the next. La Secte Noire is more realistic... but only in appearance.

*

Le Puits du Diable (The Devil's Well)

Lush vegetation, warm colors, a gate, stone; I remember that as a child this room evoked pleasant things. The heat of summer, the heavy smell of vegetation, old properties used as vacation homes, dinners out. Just for a moment, looking at this illustration, I'd hear crickets chirping.

There's nothing in the game, of course, to suggest anything so friendly, so convivial. But we're always applying our own memories and representations to what video games show us. For some incomprehensible reason, the gray skies and dead trees of Morrowind remind me of my childhood walks in the Blies valley. Iron Lord reminds me of the Vosges mountains, with their castle ruins and fir forests as far as the eye can see. And so on. In the same way that each reader participates in the novel they read by giving a face, often drawn from their personal life, to the characters and places.