Libérez Émilie
Open the game- Brand
- Les Témoins
- Year
- 2017
- Objective
- Product Launch
- Industry
- Entertainment
- Mechanic
- Puzzle
- Platform
- AR & VR
- With
- Exzeb
- With
- HKI
Objective
France Télévisions' Nouvelles Écritures unit built the piece to promote season two of the crime drama Les Témoins on France 2, giving viewers a way to live through the backstory of the season's first victim rather than just watch it unfold.
Solution
Two players lock themselves into a dark basement room, but only one puts on a VR headset. That player steps into daylight, face to face with Emilie Sauvage, who responds only to them, while the other stays behind in the dark with a flashlight, searching the physical set for hidden evidence. Neither can see what the other sees, so the pair has to keep talking to piece the story together and decide what to do next. The 40-minute session runs with no hints from a game master and branches into multiple endings — depending on how the two play it, Emilie is rescued or she isn't. An online version mirrored the same split from home: one player explored a 3D reconstruction of Emilie's room on a computer, the other viewed it on a phone through a cardboard VR viewer, each holding half the clues needed to complete the story.
- 1
Two players book a session together and are led into a sealed room equipped with only a single weak flashlight; the door locks behind them with no way to open it from inside.
- 2
The space is a dark basement strewn with broken furniture and covered in grim wall drawings, with a VR headset hanging in the center as the scene's only interface.
- 3
The pair splits into fixed, asymmetric roles for the session: one wears the headset and enters a sunlit alternate reality, while the other stays in the dark room relying only on sight and the flashlight.
- 4
The core loop is verbal: with no objective explained upfront, the two players describe what each of them perceives to work out together what needs to be done.
- 5
The headset player is guided by Emilie, a character who responds only to that player, so every action inside the virtual space runs through them.
- 6
The other player searches the physical set for hidden evidence, solving puzzles through observation and careful listening rather than locks or codes.
- 7
No hints are offered; the session runs roughly 25 to 45 minutes and closes on one of several endings, with Emilie freed or not.
- 8
An online version mirrors the same asymmetric co-op remotely: one player explores a 3D reconstruction of Emilie's room on a computer or tablet while the other meets Emilie through a smartphone in a cardboard VR viewer, and the two trade what they find to piece together her story and free her.
