Don’t worry, you can play Blanc. The cub and the fawn don’t die.

That may sound like a major spoiler for a game that didn’t come out until this week, but the developers know just how attached their audience has become to the black and white duo. And besides, a big point of developing Blanc was proving you could pluck at the emotions of players without having to fall back on killing two adorable little animals.

In Blanc, players take control of a small white deer fawn and a black tufted wolf cub. Both are hand drawn, as is the snow-drift-covered world they explore. It’s a game that can be played by two players, or by one with a bit of ambidextrous thumbstickery. It’s also the first commercially released game by Casus Ludi, a studio that’s been around since 2014.

The studio was formed around three people who kept running into each other at game jams. They decided to focus initially on Newsgames – which essentially apply journalistic principles to video games. Eventually, the trio branched out to other forms of persuasive game development.

Some of their earlier works includes titles like the NDDL Newsgame, which aims to educate players about the pros and cons of a real-world controversial airport project at Notre Dame des Landes, and Ortolands, a game designed to educate about the French tradition of poaching ortolan bunting birds and eating them. 

Casus Ludi co-founder Florent de Grissac said with Ortolands they were experimenting to see if they could make a game where it is impossible to succeed. They also wanted to see if they could make a quality title in short order. That game was created in less than two weeks with three people working on it.

It was in this process of creating games designed to have a meaningful impact on players that the idea of Blanc came about. In 2018, the team was asked to participate in a game jam in Quebec City. Before heading over from France, the team of six met to discuss what they might do during the game jam. Among the team was artist Raphael Beuchot, a friend of designer Remi Gourrierec.

Because Beuchot, perhaps best known for his work on 2011 fantasy graphic novel Le Montreur d'Histoires, was onboard, the team wanted to lean into his vision. He told the group he wanted to draw something black and white. 

When they arrived at the game jam the team set to work while a massive snow storm coated Quebec City in feet of snow.

“The theme of the game jam was ‘the perfect storm,” said De Grissac. “As always we chose not to take things literally. Most of the games did things like pirate ships trapped in a storm, or tornadoes. We chose to tell something that happens after the storm.

“What if we had an incredibly big snow storm and the world is covered in snow, what can we change in this kind of world?”

 By the end of the jam, the studio had a prototype and the desire to see what it could become. One of the key things that attracted the team to expanding the project was how the game blended the 2D hand-drawn art with a 3D world and the decision early on to create a game with no violence. 

“We wanted to create a game that didn’t require good reflexes,” said Dr Grissac. “A game that focuses on empathy and cooperation. Those are the things that I really wanted to try and during the game jam we just touched on the surface of that. So doing more work on the prototype was the way to explore more of that. 

“What was really dear to me was how do we do a narrative that is cohesive and feels like something impactful without antagonism, with a focus on cooperation and empathy? Can we do that? Is it possible to do something like that? That was something that motivated me a lot.”

As Blanc’s theme and artistic direction came into focus, so did its story. The game opens with two animals lost and stranded in a snowy landscape. Perhaps natural enemies, they will have to learn that if they cooperate they can be stronger together.

“That’s one of the messages of the game,” De Grissac said.

That message of cooperation is naturally underscored by the game’s ability – almost requirement – to play it with a friend. While you can play it controlling both characters on the screen at once, its design hopes you’ll play it with another.

Gourrierec said that he almost always designed coop games during game jams because he likes the experience of playing games side-by-side with another, and he doesn’t think there are enough such titles.

De Grissac added that cooperative gaming aligns neatly with the studio’s values.

“Making a game about cooperation and making it a coop game kind of feels natural,” he said.

Another challenge the team created for itself was that they wanted to tell this story without any text or narration.

“It was kind of a silly challenge,” De Grissac said. “Can we do this and it was also the idea of leaving humanity behind us and to witness players where they are just animals in nature.”

Game designer Gourrierec added that the narrative silence carries through the sound design of the game as well. That isn’t to say there’s no noise, almost tentative notes from a piano are occasionally joined by strings and the sounds of nature which reinforces the plight of the two animals.

“There is something with silence,” he said. “The silence was the main part of what we intended. Not full silence – there is white noise and wind – but we felt there couldn’t be a better way to tell a story with these kinds of characters.”

The game’s aesthetic follows through on that minimalistic sound design with an almost austere look. The levels are overwhelmingly white, everything piled high with snow. What color exists comes from what appears to be pencil shading and crosshatch. The tiny wolf pup is a head with a tiny body and bushy tail, and the fawn looks a bit like a snow-white Bambi, all elbows and ears.

By 2019, the team had something they felt they could shop around to publishers and then at the end of 2020 they signed with Gearbox.

“Everything changed,” De Grissac said. “We had to go fast. We had to build the team. The game that we thought about at first changed a lot and become bigger than we thought it was going to be.

“Part of it was that we were not experienced doing video games, so we didn’t envision everything. When we started working with Gearbox everything become more real.”

The team of contractors and studio employees soon blossomed to 20 people and the game eventually more than doubled in scope.

In June 2021, the game was revealed during a Nintendo Switch video stream. (The title is also coming to Windows PC) and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive.

“I was very happy to see people seemed to like what we were thinking about the intent of the game,” Gourrierec said. “It was very satisfying to me.”

With the game on the precipice of launch, De Grissac said the studio does want to do more commercial games, but he’s not sure what they will be.

“We want to innovate and do something new,” he said. “But we will also keep doing the other things we’ve always done. We won’t commit to making just commercial games. We will keep the other activities because we live for them and we like what we do.”

As the interview wrapped up, one pressing question remained, especially for the fans who have become so attached to that tiny big-headed wolf cub and its fawn companion: Do the animals die?

“That was one of our challenges,” De Grissac said. “As we said, we’re making a game without competition, without violence. The same challenge is there for the narrative. Can we make people cry without killing everyone or killing anyone? There are other ways to impact people emotionally.”

Gourrierc added that it’s OK to spoil that bit of information.

“I don’t want people to not be able to play this game because they’ve seen our game and don’t want one of them to die.”

You can pick up Blanc right here.