CLeM Backstage Tales: From a 19th Century House to a Puzzlevania Environment

In our earlier Wire publish we shared some insights on the origin of the story and the participant character of our recreation CLeM. Now we’d like to share some concepts that influenced the design of some of the necessary characters within the recreation: the home.

Right here at Mango Protocol we delight ourselves within the skill to take a look at the true world and extract surprise, thriller and enjoyable from our generally worn and mundane environment. Thus, we’ve been turning our gaze to the issues round us and injecting tons of those ideas into our video games for the reason that inception of the studio.

When growing CLeM, all of us agreed that we had to discover the right atmosphere for our recreation with escape room vibes to happen in. Fortunately, we had entry to Torre Elias, which, in addition to being a hauntingly lovely 19th century conventional Catalan home, is Mariona’s ancestral residence! You wouldn’t reject having complete entry to a protected architectural heritage constructing, proper? Effectively, neither did we.

Right here’s the primary avenue facade, the one which you could see when strolling round CLeM’s home backyard.

The home has been inhabited because it was constructed. Each technology has managed to depart their mark by adapting or rebuilding elements of the home to stick with it to fashionable dwelling requirements. That basically helped us to carry that “empty however not likely deserted” look to CLeM’s home. We wished you to discover the completely different rooms and halls and have that feeling of a place that, not so way back, was energetic and supplied a good residence for a household.

Torre Elias kitchen is a good instance of furnishings that appears outdated for immediately’s requirements however is certainly fashionable in distinction to how an 1800s kitchen might need been.

In that earlier image you’ll be able to see how Mariona tailored that blend of outdated and older furnishings to the sport.

After all, whenever you inherit an historical architectural jewel of a residence, you could introduce some modifications to make it habitable, however there’s some issues that go the check of time with flying colours and also you need to preserve at residence in any respect prices. A pair examples of this are, on one aspect, the marvelous hydraulic tiles and wall work resembling wallpaper, each lovely staples of Catalan Modernism which Mariona managed to translate completely into the sport’s type.

And, on the opposite aspect, there’s the small objects, people who carry the private style of every inhabitant to the home. Take a look at these cast-iron wall lamps that ended up lighting an in-game hall together with these sample wall decorations and much more hydraulic tiling. Seems these low mild corridors and tones have been a excellent match for the temper we wished for the least modernized rooms in CLeM’s home.

Talking of small objects, Mariona picked some ornamental and creative objects to fill the home with aptitude and persona. A few of them I managed to incorporate into puzzles, letting you join at some stage with the characters that lived in that home and coexisted with these specific objects. This Bristol glass jar will certainly catch your eye within the first levels of CLeM. It’s certainly one of these objects that helps bringing a cohesive atmosphere and on the identical time find yourself being related to the event of the gameplay.

Lastly, I’d like to stress the significance of the artworks that you just’ll give you the option to discover round the home. Mariona made the trouble of filling CLeM’s home partitions with some iconic feminine artists’ works. These photos additionally helped to encourage a few of the puzzles.

Have a tour round the home and revel in homages of work like Vanessa Bell’s “The Pond at Charleston”, Tamara de Lempicka’s “Plante grasse et fiole” or “Pianist” by cubist artist Maria Blanchard, which impressed a part of a musical puzzle within the recreation.

I hope you loved this walkthrough alongside the real-world influences that helped construct our beloved home. You may discover it proper now, as CLeM, our acclaimed puzzle journey with escape room vibes and a darkish story to unveil, is out now on Xbox Sequence X|S and Xbox One.