The Bounds VR is the first game of Build the Light Studio's Project Louisiana horror VR project. It's also the studio's first game and one aiming to be an atmospheric horror VR game experience based on a Louisiana mansion and voodoo practices. In The Bounds VR, players step into the shoes of protagonist Booker, who is searching for his missing daughter. That's where the horror kicks off, with Booker discovering the mysterious Legrasse family curse as players search in and outside the mansion to unravel its mysteries.
The Best War Games recently sat down with project manager, lead 3D artist, and lead level designer Pierre Mauger, as well as lead developer and designer Géraud Toussaint, to discuss The Bounds VR's overall horror experience and what's involved in its various gameplay elements. Mauger and Géraud also spoke more about the game's combat and paranormal abilities, its emphasis on VR gameplay, and its intriguing use of horror, story, and lore. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Joining The Gaming Industry and How Build the Light Studio Began
Q: Could you tell us a bit about how you've got into the game industry, and what led you to make a horror VR game?
Toussaint: Two really different cases for both of us. I started working in IT as a global thing, and I started working in a service enterprise, where we mostly made websites. What I began with had nothing to do with video games, but that's something that has interested me since I was a kid, like 12 or 13. So, I always did some stuff on my own. At some point, we met each other, and we started talking. One day, we just figured out that we were kind of in the same situation, where both of us were making our own projects - our own prototypes on our own. I was lacking a lot of good visuals and good 3D stuff, and Pierre was lacking the whole programming part.
We started working together, just to check if we were matching, if we were able to work properly together on some projects. We went from something really specific, really small to starting our first prototype, which is the origin of the VR data that we are working on right now, which is available on Itch.io already. Yeah, we matched up pretty well, so we started working together more with the idea that we would create our own studio.
On my part, since I was not part of the industry from the beginning, it was really rough, really hard to meet someone that's willing to give you a chance to enter since you don't have anything to show, really, and you don't have any studies or anything like that to reassure people. The best option for me was to do my own stuff, and since we clicked well, both of us kept the idea of working aside to keep the whole family stuff and living possible. And yeah, we started working on something bigger.
That's how we began to work on this title together. Since then, we've confirmed the whole prototype, the whole idea, the game plan, and stuff like that. Since all the feedback that we had was quite positive, we kept the project so we could have something interesting to show. Since last year, we have spent more or less one year basically talking with publishers, so we can get some backup on the whole process because we are quite small - we can’t do everything. The video game part is quite good for us, but the whole marketing and communication stuff is something that we haven't mastered, I'm going to say, and any help will be useful. That’s basically it for me. I know the early part is quite different for Pierre for the whole video game industry.
Mauger: If you want to summarize the journey, it's "Boy, that escalated quickly." It was our first attempt at making a small prototype, and we complement each other very well. Géraud is a programming and CG artist. It matched on paper, but it also matched in real life. Right now, it’s a full-fledged game! And we are working on that, so it's a great journey. We got burned a bit at the beginning, but right now, we are confident about the game, we're confident about the team. Because it was very important to us to make it step by step - first small prototype, smaller project, very short. If we can manage that, why not? Why not try a bigger project? And bigger and bigger.
Right now, we are very proud of the work of the team. We are very proud of the people who have helped us because we are two main developers, but there are some who make music for us and make designs. We’ve got a few trainees because we both work in a video game school during the week, and we have many junior talents emerging from the school. By summer, we’ll take one or two trainees – Géraud can take a vacation, I can take a vacation [laughs]. It's a really great work experience, and more than that, it's a great human experience. Our first, I will be completely sincere, and right now, we have a very good and positive vibe.
I would say everyone is very kind. They want us to complete the game, they want us to achieve the game, and it's very positive for us. That's why we were able to work, because the first time we worked together with Géraud was in 2018-2019, something like that. The Bounds and Project Louisiana, we are working with a lot of time on the project. All this positive energy is very good for us and keeps us together.
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Silent Hill And Resident Evil Inspirations In The Bounds VR
Q: I understand The Bounds is inspired by games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Were there any specific inspirations from those games?
Mauger: The horror section is more Silent Hill than Resident Evil. There are not many jump scares, not those kinds of things. You can shoot, you can aim, you can engage in combat with an axe, but that's not the main part of the game. The game is atmospheric. There is a kind of sadness, a moody atmosphere, something like that.
The Resident Evil part is that we have very classical game mechanics and pacing. We have Resident Evil pacing, I would say, and a Silent Hill mood. That’s the purpose. That’s the aim, the goal of the game.
Q: Was the game's mansion setting inspired by other games set in Louisiana, like Alone in the Dark? Or of course, Resident Evil starts with the mansion.
Mauger: You see Louisiana with Resident Evil 7, and that's absolutely right, Alone in the Dark was an inspiration and reference too. But the main reason is because it's not common. You see New York, you see big cities, you see everything in video games, but Louisiana and the atmosphere of the American South is not very common. That's something a bit challenging because we are in France, we are not in the US, but we felt that it could bring something very unique. And it's very important for me, at least. It allows us to speak about Louisiana's legacy, slavery, that kind of stuff. I've got a Creole family, it was a theme not so common right now, and I wanted to speak about it. It's not about slavery. It's not about the slaves and everything, but that title, the mood was very interesting for me as a CG artist to work with.
The Bounds VR's Mansion Setting and Story
Q: You talked about the importance of Louisiana. Could you explain a bit more about the background of the mansion setting?
Mauger: There's the legacy of the Legrasse family. It's a very well-known ancient slave owner, and the main character’s wife, Catherine, is in the hospital. You come from New York, and you learn of this Louisiana mansion. He doesn’t discover the whole thing, but he realizes how far it is, how dark it is, how heavy it is. Right now, there is a curse on the Legrasse family. That is the horror during The Bounds VR.
Q: I understand the protagonist, Booker, is searching for his missing daughter. Could you tell us a little bit about the story and how things kind of kick off with the game?
Mauger: To summarize, you have a call from the New Orleans hospital. Your wife is in the hospital, and she is badly injured. The one thing you know is that your wife was with your daughter, Emilie. She was at the brother-in-law’s mansion, the Legrasse mansion, and you tried to contact him, but there is no answer. You rush to New Orleans and there is no other way than to find your daughter. That's your main goal, but it will be very complicated. You don't know what happened. You have to find clues about what happened.
You have to explore the mansion. You will see the gardens, you will see inside the mansion, you will see the basement, you will see a prison, you will see some dark secrets of the mansion. And if the player is able enough, you will have all the timeline of what happened. You will have all the clues about what this character did and what this character did. It can be tricky if you don't have all the information, so there is horror, there is action, and there is a case to solve. That's the kind of point and click key things of the game. We want to bring a lot of things to players. It's not necessarily something very difficult, but if you can organize all the things you will find—there are journals, there are some papers you can find-—you will have a very tight lore about what happened to the Legrasse family. What is that curse? And that's what we want to bring to the players.
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Baron Samedi In The Bounds VR
Q: Jumping off the Voodoo curse, I understand Baron Samedi acts as a guide for the player, but you don't know what side he's on. Can you tell us more about his role in the game and the role of voodoo?
Mauger: There are two things about your questions. The cast. We are a very small studio. We had to work around that, so we can’t bring every voodoo god into the game. It would be a bad thing, I suppose, but voodoo is a very rich culture. It's a very rich pantheon. Right now, it's just the first game of the Louisiana project, but we tried to push someone interesting. If you know Méphistophélès from Dante - that kind of character. “Okay, he told me something. Is it very important? Is he messing with me, is he kidding me?” That's the thing.
Exploring the voodoo gods in voodoo culture is very interesting. It's very rich, and that character is great. Especially in VR, you can be lost very easily, you can miss some information because you have to look everywhere, and you have to look above a few things. It's helpful for us to have a character that can pop in who can say, “Oh, did you look at that thing? Right there?” “Oh, no, I didn't look at that thing.” Its narrative element is very important to the lore, and it's a very essential game mechanic. It can help players, and it can fool you at the same time.
Q: How did you come up with your take on Baron Samedi? Obviously, you've got these voodoo inspirations, but were there any influences from popular culture for Baron Samedi? He kind of pops up in lots of different places.
Mauger: I was looking at several iterations of Baron Samedi in movies, in comic books, and the trickery thing about Baron Samedi was something that was very common to the character. That's what interested me in the character because if you have something very good with you, and “Oh, come on, okay, or you can do it, come on. Go that way.” I don't like those kinds of characters. It's always more intriguing if you don't know if they are friend or foe.
After that, the visuals that we added were very classical. You have the hat, you have the vest. During the game, if you look very closely at Samedi, you will see there are a few things that are not very human, I would say. If you are very perceptive, you will see that it's not a very human thing. I don't want to spoil it, but just look at the model. Look at the feet, for example. It's not a human dressed as a voodoo god. It's really the incarnation of the voodoo god. There are a few events in the game where you can piss Baron Samedi off, and you don't want to piss Baron Samedi off.
The Bounds VR's Creatures and Approach to Horror
Q: Could you talk about the creatures or possible dangers in the game?
Toussaint: There will be two big entities that we will be fighting during the whole game. One is something pretty hidden and small, where it will appear in several places around the whole manor and the rooms that we'll encounter. The idea is just to make sure that the player is always on guard, always thinking that something might happen. The first one is a small entity that is basically hidden in the dark, waiting for you to come by, to have a look, to pass by, and when you turn around, you see it, but you didn't see it when you passed by. That's the main point – it’s the element of surprise that we want to bring into the game. We wanted to make it not only in the prison, but we want to regularly have some reminders to the players that they are not safe.
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The other one will be basically the boss of the game that we will encounter two or three times, I believe, during the game. We don't have to fight him that much, but you will encounter him throughout the game. I mean, the first half of the game, you won't have anything about him at all. You will have the first entity that will be here. That will kind of make something uncomfortable for the player, but nothing much more. You find that there is something more, that there is that other big entity that you will have to fight to be free. You will encounter him a few times, not that much, but you will encounter it and that's when you might die.
Mauger: If I may, that's a bit the Silent Hill way.
Toussaint: Yeah.
Mauger: You will have a few bosses and a few creature encounters, but when you meet them, when you confront them, that's the scary part. “Okay, I just have a small gun. I have a small rusty axe and that huge thing is popping right in front of me. "What do I do? I just run, I fight it. I don't have much ammo.” It’s not Doom [laughs].
Toussaint: There won't be anything unlimited about the guns. There are a few guns and a few bullets, and you can use them for a lot of stuff. When you are blocked at some point, you can use the bullets to break some doors or stuff like that, so you can keep going on. However, that means that you won't have them for the fights, so it might be possible that you will have to do some fights with only your axe.
Mauger: You want to avoid it. That’s a really Silent Hill thing in the game. I discovered Resident Evil at 14 years old, 13 years old, and it was great. But as you grow as an adult, you understand that horror is not necessarily jump scares. Horror is the mood, it’s the atmosphere. I would enjoy it if the player told me in the future “Oh, I played the game, and it was very creepy. It was kind of nasty” There will be one or two jump scares, I won't lie, but that's not our main goal. What I want players to experience is that deep fear, that deep discomfort. That's what I want to aim with The Bounds VR.
How Scary Is The Bounds VR?
Q: How scary do you think the game is compared to other horror VR games or other horror games in general?
Mauger: I will be honest, I think it will be less scary than other titles.
Toussaint: Something to keep in mind with horror VR games is it's a different kind of scare, not more scary.
Mauger: If you look at the Madison VR that will be released, I think tomorrow or very soon, you can see players jumping like “Oh, my God”. That's not what we are bringing to the players. But if we succeed, the player will be “Oh, yeah, I remember that scene when you find that stuff, and oh, God, it was awful.” You know, it's not the dog breaking the window in Resident Evil. That's, once again, the Silent Hill part. I want people to remember, “Oh, and when I was walking through the prison, the humidity, the sounds, everything.” I want that to impress the players, not, “Oh, come on, I had a heart attack.” No, that's not my point. I want them to remember what they went through, every time during the game.
I really want the player to remember the lore, remember the story, remember what they felt when they discovered the whole case, what really happened in the mansion. That's what we want to achieve with The Bounds VR.
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Toussaint: Yeah, we want them to have strong feelings about the game when they play it, and we are more about making them uncomfortable during the whole experience than scary. Of course, there will be some scary moments, but yeah, an ideal world for us would be not players repeating the game, but they have to drop the whole thing from time to time. You have to drop the helmet and say “I’ve had enough for today. That’s too much, I have to stop there.”
We don’t have the feeling that we can really relax and breathe, because the only part where you will be able to do that will be at the very beginning because you don't know anything. You are just searching for ways to enter the whole manor and stuff like that, and you will find very few things. But the more you go during the game, the more you go along with your adventure, the more we will hopefully make you uncomfortable. I don't want them to leave the game, but I want them to have strong feelings about what's happening - what we are, what the stories are about, and what they are discovering. Even for those that are not interested in the lore, that won't be listening to the whole audio logs and reading the old texts, because there will be a lot of stuff like that.
There will be that atmosphere, there will be that sound, there will be that humidity. The whole thing has to give you the impression that there is something unnatural there, that it shouldn't be there, and that you shouldn't be there either. The idea is that the players will feel the same way as Booker, which is he doesn't want to be there. He wants to run, but he has to find his daughter. So, he's keeping the whole adventure, and you'll have to keep the game through.
Mauger: As Géraud said, if I can make someone rage quit, yes, that's the point. I want the player to be “Okay, that's enough. I don't want to play that game. It's too uncomfortable. But ah, come on, I want to know the whole truth. I want to know the story."
With the audience, we are not going to make a game for little children. That's something very, very clear. Right now, the target audience is clearly young adults, those kinds of people, and if you have children, that’s good. We want people to think about family, about legacy. That's one of the main points of the game. We want people to think about slavery. Once again, that's not the main point. But it's kind of a subtlety that interests me. We want the story to be impactful for players.
The Bounds VR Combat and Paranormal Powers
Q: Could you talk a little bit about the combat and the paranormal powers?
Toussaint: Basically, the whole game is evolving around some capabilities that you will find. At the beginning of the game, you will be introduced to the whole voodoo stuff quite directly. The first big enigma you will have to solve is basically around a voodoo portal that you have to destroy so you can enter the manor. That’s something that we can say with no issues because it’s really at the beginning of the game.
That will introduce you to some of the paranormal stuff that you will see during the game. At some point, you'll be using a voodoo doll to solve those kinds of enigmas, and you will be able to find some specific objects that will give you some specific powers.
The first one will be something that we are used to seeing in VR games, which is attracting objects to you. That's something that is the gameplay, so we don't have to walk the whole way through objects and we can get them moving to us, which is a better experience for the player. That's something really useful and that should be the first one that they find, but anyway, they can miss them.
For some of them, they will be blocked because they need them to go through the adventure, but there are a lot of moments where they can miss them, go forward, and they will be blocked because they don't have the power. There is the whole thing about searching stuff in the game, so those objects will give you the powers will be the same - you will have to find them. They won't be given that easily, but they won't be super hidden either. The idea is to involve them by searching for them and finding them. It will be the same for normal weapons, and those also are not that many. You will find a gun, you will find a hunting shotgun, and there are a few axes. One is one-ended, and the other is more like a firefighter's axe – a real big one.
When you have found the gun and the shotgun, you will have to find the ammo that you will be using. And once again, there is not that much. When you find the weapon, you also have to find ammo, so you can use it. At some point, they can be used for opening doors, as we said before, solving some puzzles, destroying some locks, and stuff like that, so you can access some stuff. But yeah, once again, you don't have a lot of weapons. And if you use all your ammo for that, then you will certainly be missing them in the combat part.
About the powers, besides the one that attracts, the two others will be much more about solving puzzles and creating some chaos in certain situations when we fight the boss. The second one will be time reverse, like a rewind on time. We have some assets, some situations, and when you're close to it, the idea is to change its status. To move it back to what it was before. That will allow you to change some stuff around the whole map or the objects around you.
With the last one, the idea is to make you interact with the whole world around you, the objects around you, so you have an impact on the maps, the situation, and what's happening in the game. It's not really for the combat parts. We don't have any aim of using the two big powers during the combat, but the first one will be useful because if you're fighting, you will be able to throw the axe at them. If you plant the axe on the boss or drop it, this power will allow you to attract the axe back to your hand without having to face the boss upclose.
Mauger: You can throw it, bring it back, and you can take a shot at the enemy. If he walks away with the axe on the neck or on the head, you can bring back the axe and go back. That was also something interesting about voodoo. It unlocks the fantasy and mystical powers. It's very satisfying too, especially in VR. You have the voodoo dolls, and there is an entry on Twitter where we showed a few things about the powers. You get the attract, you get the time reverse. That's what we wanted.
When Géraud was developing the gameplay we knew that we wanted to have grab, to have shooting, the kind of classical mechanics. We were thinking about “Okay, we have a great setup, we have great settings with the voodoo culture, the voodoo gods, and all the fantasy in the project. We should offer something more to the player. Okay, let's get the grab.”
The grab is a bit between God of War - the axe from God of War – and Alyx. That was something very important to us to think about - “Okay, that is very satisfying when you point something, you grab it, that is very physical in some kind of way.” I think that’s the main purpose of the VR experience, to have body mechanics, to have physical experiences. I assure you, when you take the axe, and you slam the door with the axe, there is something very cool, very satisfying about that. If you consider VR, just like a luxury-use camera, a very high-tech camera, you are, I think, missing the point. The point with VR is the full experience. You have to move, you have to look, you have to be immersed. Immersion in VR is a great thing. It works and we knew it. That's one of the main great points about that. But when you get physical about VR, that's the thing. We are not Beat Saber. That's not the point. But if you can make the player physically involved in the experience, that’s the thing.
I've got an example of that. There are a few things that you can find below some furniture, some tables, some chairs, something like that. You have to look everywhere. I want the player to be “Okay, right, I found that scary thing.” That's when you are really enjoying VR. Just to be seated and just with the headset on the camera is great. I can look whenever, wherever I want. That's not the point of VR, so we opened a lot of things to do with your controllers. There is firing, there is hand-to-hand combat with the axe, and you have powers and special abilities. We won’t be too generous. The game will be three to four hours, I think, on the first run. Not necessarily to find everything. If you want to find everything, it will be a bit longer, but we want the player to enjoy every minute. For powers, Attract is the first one that you unlock. It comes half an hour after the beginning of the game, you can have that power. But the last power, you have 20 minutes, 30 minutes before the ending of the game. Every hour, you have something new we bring to the table, and that allows us to involve the player.
The powers seem quite a unique thing, especially with how you combined them with voodoo.
Mauger: I don't know if it's a very unique thing, but if I'm honest, the setting is unique. That's why we chose Louisiana and voodoo culture. Attract is something simple and something you already see. We try to be humble, we don't want to break the game, and we are a small indie studio. We want to bring a very polished experience. We want the player to have fun, to be involved. We don't want to revolutionize, but the setting and the voodoo doll are very classical elements of voodoo culture. It's like an interface. I don't know if I explained that well. I think an interface can be everything. In fact, it can be a cell phone, it can be a sci-fi gadget. Because we are in that setting, we can use the voodoo doll. I think the voodoo doll is more original than a cell phone or something very sci fi.
But it's not a revolution. We say what we want is for the player to enjoy the ride. We think we have a great experience; we have a great setting. That's why we chose it, and it's kind of a classical experience. There is a different thing. We want to explore what VR can bring to the players. We would like to explore more, but maybe in a few years when we have more experience in game development. But right now, we have a unique setting, we know that - that's what we are pushing in the marketing right now. Ultimately, we want a polished experience, we want a very pleasing experience more than a once-in-a-lifetime experience. That's not what we are aiming for, but I assure you the settings of Louisiana and voodoo culture, that's quite refreshing. The feedback is very positive.
Toussaint: Yeah, I think the main point is we are not trying to make something that revolutionizes the whole industry or VR games. I think that, when we started working on the title, we saw some big titles launching, which gave us an idea of how we wanted to make the game. The whole point is to make something right, to make it good for the players, and to make it good for us. Not something really different. Because if you take each and every piece of gameplay, power, or anything like that, I'm pretty sure that you can find it at some point on any other VR project that's already released. We want it to be unique in how we mix them together and make it work for us in our setting, which is the real unique part of the game. Our main concern is not to do something that nobody did before us, but it's more about making sure that what we use is something that's working.
Mauger: The gameplay experience is very important in VR. I can tell you in a few months soon about the development. If it goes right, I think we will have the whole game playable at the end of August, early September - something like that - and we will be able to play the game from start to finish. But after that, there is a long polish phase. We have a lot to work on because we have a lot of game mechanics - we know that. But we want the game to be rewarding, to be enjoyable, so we will take the time we need to polish the experience. Because if you have five or six different game mechanics but none of them are very tight, very pleasant, you miss the point once again.
It's almost over right now, but we know that we have a few months. We will reveal the release date in a few months, I think, or a release window, but the game will be released when it is finished and when it will be really enjoyable from start to finish. That's the main challenge, I think, in VR.
[END]
The Bounds VR is currently in development.