CLTRS

Sometimes, to reach climax, you just have to explore!

CLTRS invites players to dive into a playful exploration of female sexual pleasure. Using a rolling avatar, players cruise through space, discovering the body's landscape with swift moves, sparking life wherever they go.

Creative direction : Laureline Chiapello

Students : Coralyn Potvin, Sofia Mayada Lorenzo, Marie-France Yang, J. Sellors, Nicolas Gagnon-Picard, Yi Theo Wei, Lucas Metivier, Indra Yang, Edwin Lam,  Caroline Savoie-Laflamme, Trish Nguyen, Marine Pénard, Gilles Alexandre Boisclair, Alexandre Tremblay, Léa Bouchard, Guillaume Lévesque, G. Bélanger Leroux, Marco Aurelio Galan, Charles Chouinard.

Mentors : Florian Glesser (programming), Taissia Abdullina (artistic direction), Pierre Tousignant (production), Yannick Francillette (production), Kevin Lavigne (production assistant ), Vincent Graciet (lighting), Isabel Aubin (VFX).

This project is a 3D video game for young women and its goal is to discover the clitoris and its role in female pleasure. The players are immersed in the human body, inside the clitoris itself. As a tiny being infiltrated into a strange universe, they explore the inside of the organ, recalling the concept of cartoons like Once Upon a Time… Life (1987), The Magic Bus (1994) or more recently Inside out (2015). 

The project is innovative because the players do not initially know what they are exploring. The inside of the clitoris is not realistic. On the contrary, it’s a fantasy, surreal, dreamlike world. The clitoris is transformed into a neo-baroque boudoir, filled with silky cushions, sofas, curved paths, and mysterious passages. This metaphor has been chosen in accordance with the experience of the game director, aiming to translate her experience into an accessible game. The game is primarily based on environmental storytelling: the narration is infused in the space explored by the player. Through this, we hope to encourage curiosity for the female body and pleasure, reaching a wide audience and overcoming language barriers. 

Adventure and exploration games rely on players’ curiosity and perception of space (Jenkins, 2004; Lessard, 2014). Progressively understanding the nature of the space around them is typically a delightful revelation for players (Flynn, 2000). Exploring space allows learning, and players create a mental map of the place (Spence and Feng, 2010). Thus, players will become acquainted with female anatomy through the game. 

The avatar is a protean creature that represents curiosity. Everything is designed to encourage and visually reward exploration. We aim for a beautiful, attractive, and exciting outcome! The avatar moves fluidly and dynamically, even frenetically. The movement is inspired by sliding games and pinball games. The level design borrows from these styles of play, and players must use the elements of the scenery to visit the different areas of the clitoris. However, there will be no convoluted puzzles, overly difficult areas, or trials requiring extreme dexterity. Our goal is not to portray female sexuality as an insurmountable challenge. On the contrary, the objective is to demonstrate that one must simply dare to explore. The experience is thus casual and benevolent. 

Female pleasure is a subject that’s often overlooked: the gap between male and female sexual satisfaction remains significant in heterosexual relationships, partly due to a lack of knowledge about the clitoris (Andrejek, Fetner, and Heath 2022). The goal of our game is to emphasize the significance of the clitoris, demystify it, and firmly link it with pleasure. However, the game is not intended to be pornographic, nor should it be considered a conventional serious game. This is a delicate endeavor, as representations of female pleasure in media and academia are still taboo and scarce. Such representations are mostly found in either erotic and pornographic contexts or in medical textbooks. Developing a game that avoids these two extremes presents numerous challenges. Through art, we hope to surmount some cultural barriers that hinder discussions about female sexual pleasure. 

It’s crucial to stress that the process of creating the work itself serves as a way to break down barriers. The game is a research-creation, meaning that both the process and the product are documented and analyzed. Furthermore, as a researcher and creator, I (the game director) chose to realize the game with students, both in their coursework and through research internships, and with the assistance of industry professionals. While this is common in final projects aimed at showcasing students’ skills for entering the video game industry, it’s rarer for expressive games. The subject sparked numerous intriguing discussions, effectively crossing boundaries between research, creation, and teaching, but also between public and private matters.