Here you’ll find the french documents I sent to the ENJMIN entrance examination, along some commentaries written (in broken english in a second state) right after learning the jury’s decision. I often made it to the last selection stage, but ultimately didn’t get in. After a conversation with some folks (keeping names out of this) it apperas that despite my best efforts, I didn’t have the profile they were looking for so I stopped applying for it. I do not hold this school in my heart for multiple reasons. But I have to give them credits fort actually making me sit down and right my first gdd drafts.

Enjmin 2013

State of the project: Accepted for the first two stages, rejected at the final interview.

PDF link

I think I got accepted at first, because of the simplicity and originality of the game. They may have liked the puzzle X arcade gameplay crossover and some of the interesting gimmicks it had. Especially the multiplayer aspects. But honestly… What a boring project to read it was. The presentation, the “drawings”, the overall aspect of this document was rushed out during internship lunchbreaks and it shows. Also, with hindsight, it lacked a lot of things; diagrames, USP&KSP, time session length, gameflow schematic, etc

I have been rejected at the oral session because I couldn’t understand one of the examinator’s question and thus couldn’t defend my project correctly. I was really stressed out and confused by this oral exam. I thought it was just a simple interview where they would judge my motivation…But no, ENJMIN interview is not a usual one (if there is such a thing). In this crucial interview, you’ve got the typical interview stuff (who are you, what diploma do you have, etc). But most importantly you have the second part where you have to defend your project, and demonstrate how cultured you are. I’ve been caught off guard by that. So when they asked me what was my favorite game, movie, book, etc I couldn’t find a correct answer. Honestly, that was the usual cheap question… How could I pick one game from all my library on the spot… It’s something you have to think of beforehand. I wasn’t prepared for that.

Enjmin 2014

State of the project: Rejected at first stage

PDF link

Seriously… what a joke this project is… I was a mess when I wrote this project, both physically and mentaly. No diagram, no illustrations, long and overcomplicated sentences… At least half of this project is describing the scenario, the universe, or just stating obvious stuff. WHERE IS THE GAMEPLAY ??? It’s supposed to be a game design project !!!

To this day, I still think the idea behind this project can be salvaged. But damn … I understand that nobody on earth can bear with this writing to sap the originality out of it. It was so badly explained and I didn’t focus enough on the gameplay elements.

I can’t blame them for rejecting this.

Enjmin 2015

State of the project: Accepted for the first two stages, rejected at the final interview.

PDF link

After reading my project, some people argued that my game was too complex for kids…. But let’s face it, it’s three elementary game mechanics mashed together. It’s nothing too fancy (and that could be a bad point… maybe this project lacks some originality). It’s an “easy to learn hard to master” game. And who’s got more free time than kids and teenagers ?

Compared to “Derive/ENJMIN 2013”, this project may lack a little touch of madness, of crazy, originality. But here is the problem. Back then, ENJMIN restricted the number of pages to 25 for GD project. So it’s near impossible to be fully original with this limit. A totally new gameplay concept would need way more pages to be described. Also, originality comes at a risk, the jury is more likely to dislike something original but badly explained… So yeah, I might be bailing out on this one. But honestly, I think I found a right compromise between originality and readability with this project.

I really liked the subject this year. “Higgs boson” really inspired me. I had a lot of ideas (but no way to express all of them …)

Here I’ll try to list the principle ideas I had for this project:

• “Collision” : collision is a multiplayer driving game. In this game, players are divided in two teams of elementary particles. The game takes place in the CERN collider. Each team races throught the collider in opposite direction. The goal of one team is to collide with particle from the other team. While the goal of the opposite team is to survive for a certain time.

• “ARG game” : I didn’t dig up this one really far. But I wanted to develop an android ARG game to emulate the science process. People would have to exchange informations throught the world and confront different results to discover “the truth”

• “reality” : This game was mainly focused on time shift (due to higgs field and other “stuff”). if something as abstract as the weight, could be explained by elementary particles. Why couldn’t the time be explained too? And thus, I decided to create a game based on time+weight shifting mechanics. But I was afraid of doing something too close to “Quantum Conundrum”

• “gravity” : This would have been a game solely based on weight shifting. But like “Higgs Syndrom” or “katamari damacy”, you would start on a little scale (elementary particules) and end up moving galaxies

• “educational game” : At first my project was designed to be an educational and scientifically exact game. I wanted to get kids involed and passionate for science. But then I realized how complicated it would be to explain from the ground, what a bozon is to 8->12 years old. Plus, I’m no specialist. At the beginning, “Higgs Syndrom” was this game. It had a lot more of different levels/scales (elementary particles, atomic, molecule, planteary, galactic, universe). It was also entirely based on puzzles, and “accesories gimmicks”. Molecules levels were AR based, so kids could manipulate them. I had some levels whiche were only solvable when the battery of the phone was a certain level of charge. But then I realized how complex the project would have been… And also it would have been just another puzzle games, with interesting gimmicks. It would have no substance. And it certainly would have been too complicated/frustrating for a lot of kids. So I decided to gave up. i kept some ideas, throw others away, but most importantly, I decided to had more FUN to it.

My thoughts on the 2nd exam : English test went pretty well General culture test has been OK, except for those crazy names…. I can’t remember any names it’s nearly pathological ^^” Media analysis test …. Due to the technical issues we had, I’ve spent too much times writing notes and so couldn’t write half of the stuff I had. But it should be enough

My thoughts on the interview : If one of the jury guy starts talking about poneys …. He’ll get pretty depressive and remember some backlash he had in the industry. It will put him in a bad mood and will not like you for putting him in this depressive state…. If some jury starts talking about poney, stop him. Also after talking with some jury member I learned that ENJMIN was looking for diverse profiles for their Game Designers. So someone like me who made the logical decision of going for an IT degree has way less chance than someone who did some obscure science of dry fly reproduction degree. This combined with the facts that a goof half of the sits are taken by people coming out from private gamedesign school (that didn’t exist back in my days) terminated every desire I had to go to this place. I’m better off climbing my place to some GD job the hard way than belittling me for a place at this “school” where students don’t attend to courses and prefer playing NERF all day long. No thank you, no remorse, no shame. It’s a goodbye for me.

The Sleeping Pit

Here lies a french short Game Design Document / Game Concept Document about The Sleeping pit ( link to the WebGL Demo ). The main concept, ideas, prototype is from me. And this document emerged after sitting down with a couple of GAMAGORA students and trying to write a proper game concept document.

Short Game Design Document (in french)

WebGL Demo