Four years after its founding, Montreal studio Lowbirth Games is finally here This bed that we made a very first video game proposal. The result: a love letter to the works of Alfred Hitchcock and Agatha Christie, but with firm roots in the province of La Belle.
Montreal, 1958. Very strange things happen at the Clarington Hotel. Some even go so far as to claim that the Montreal establishment is haunted. What is it really? The mystery floats and stretches from floor to floor.
By taking on the role of Sophie Roy – a particularly curious maid – the player will have to do his research and one by one connect the clues left here and there by the customers, all of which probably lead to a murder committed in certain locations.
Shadow workers
The idea behind “This Bed We Made” began to germinate a long time ago in the minds of Chloé Lussier and her co-founders of Lowbirth Games, namely her sister Raphaëlle Lussier and her cousin Olivier Lussier. Having herself worked in a hotel business during her studies, she sought to exploit the reality of these shadow workers, fertile ground for an investigation of this kind.
“When you stay in a hotel, you often forget about the maids. Therefore, people often leave behind intimate objects that can reveal things that even those closest to them do not know. So it’s interesting to be in Sophie’s shoes because she conducts her own investigation and has this privileged access to her privacy, but without the authority or obligations that the police have,” says Chloé Lussier in an interview with the Journal .
Chloé Lussier, co-founder of Lowbirth Games. Photo provided by Lowbirth Games
Choice and consequences
Indeed, because the player can carry out the investigation as he sees fit… and sometimes by looking the other way. In fact, it is possible to manipulate certain evidence, make it disappear or even move it in order to draw the suspicion of the authorities towards one suspect or another. And each of these decisions will have an impact on the adventure and its outcome, as “dozens” of conclusions have been developed for This Bed We Made.
Even the way the player completes Sophie’s daily tasks will have a significant impact on the heroine’s fate and credibility.
“The main goal was to make the experience even more immersive by having the player perform various actions, be it making the bed or even mopping the floor in the hotel lobby. But ultimately we told ourselves that whether or not she completed her tasks diligently would also affect Sophie’s reputation and her relationship with her colleagues. Everything is taken into account,” emphasizes Chloé Lussier.
The Quebec accent
For this very first international business card, it was also important to the Lowbirth Games studio to set the action right here, in the heart of the metropolis, in order to offer players from here and elsewhere a showcase of our culture and everyday life. And to take this concept even further, he called on a group of actors from Quebec to lend their voices to the characters in both the French and English versions.
Actor Robert Naylor lends his voice to the character of Andrew, a colleague of the heroine from “This Bed We Made”. Photo provided by Lowbirth Games
We can therefore hear Robert Naylor, Patrick-Emmanuel Abellard, Victoria Diamond and others Alex Bisping in their languages, all of whom have retained their natural accents.
“It was important for us as a studio in Quebec that players recognized us in our work. Location, accent and expressions don’t have a huge impact on the plot, so it’s still accessible to people playing elsewhere in the world. But it is our signature, our way of showing our pride. We wanted to do it,” explains Chloé Lussier.
- The game We made this bed will be available on PS5 and PC starting January 1stum November. It will also release on PS4 and Xbox Series X/S on December 13th.