Montreal designer creating video game set in the October Crisis
A small Montreal video game company is developing a new game set during the 1970 October Crisis.
The company has received a boost of support through a Kickstarter campaign and is hoping to become the first local gaming company to focus entirely on storylines from Quebec.
Cauchemars d'Octobre is a first-person point-and-click game set in a working-class Montreal neighbourhood during the crisis when soldiers patrolled the streets searching for Quebec deputy premier Pierre Laporte and British diplomat James Cross, who were kidnapped by the FLQ.
It is a period in Quebec history that game designer Olivier Leclaire finds fascinating.
"I'm attracted to what the average Quebecois was feeling during this time of fear," said Leclaire. "They didn't know if the police would come knock at their door at 2 a.m. the next day to take them away. It was a time of fear, and my goal is to represent this fear through horror symbolism."
In the game, characters are plagued by recurring nightmares, there's a monster, and people start to mysteriously disappear. The player has to investigate.
While the game explores the background of the crisis, Leclair said the kidnappings and Westmount bombings come up but are never shown.
A newsboy holds up a newspaper with a banner headline reporting the invoking of the War Measures Act, in Ottawa, Oct. 16, 1970 the first time Canada had invoked the act in peacetime. The act was put into effect following the kidnapping of British diplomat James Cross and Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte by the terrorist FLQ. An author of Quebec's high-school history textbooks casts the federal government as the main villain of the October Crisis 40 years ago, disputes that Pierre Laporte was murdered, and defends the terrorist FLQ whose victims were, he says, mere “collateral damage” in the greater cause of independence. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Peter Bregg
The game is Leclaire's second. The first - Whispering Valley - explores the history of Catholicism in Quebec.
"Our Catholic background is not that great," he said. "I wanted to represent what it was to live under the Catholic institutions at the end of the 19th century."
Leclaire surpassed his fundraising goal for "Cauchemars D'Octobre" and hopes to become the first company in Quebec to make games about La Belle Province.
"If you look at Japan, videogames are their number one cultural export, and they express their culture through videogames," he said. "Here in Quebec, we mostly do American games for the American target, and I think it's a missed opportunity not to do games about Quebec."
The game is still several years away from being played in living rooms across the province.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories

Health care in Canada could be more like Norway's, with some improvements: study
Canada is trailing behind other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries when it comes to both the number of physicians relative to the population, and its spending on primary care, according to a new analysis published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Schools closed, more than 100,000 without electricity as snow falls in Quebec
More than 106,000 homes in Quebec are without electricity after Environment Canada reported nearly 25 cm of snow had fallen across the province.
Escaped kangaroo found safe after 3 days on the loose in Ontario
A kangaroo that escaped the Oshawa Zoo last week has been recaptured after more than three days on the loose, with one police officer sustaining minor injuries during the effort to apprehend the marsupial.
Israel orders evacuations as it widens offensive but Palestinians are running out of places to go
Israel's military renewed calls Monday for mass evacuations from the southern town of Khan Younis, where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge in recent weeks, as it widened its ground offensive and bombarded targets across the Gaza Strip.
Dam threatens to burst in the Laurentians, residents evacuated from homes
People living in Chute-Saint-Philippe and Lac-des-Ecorces in the Laurentians are being asked to evacuate their homes due to potential infrastructure issues at the Kiamika dam and Morier dike.
'Potent and impactful storm' on the way to B.C.'s South Coast, Vancouver Island
Heavy rainfall is in store for much of southern B.C. starting Monday, when a 'potent and impactful storm' is forecast to make landfall, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Oxford University Press has named 'rizz' as its word of the year
Oxford University Press has named 'rizz' as its word of the year, highlighting the popularity of a term used by Generation Z to describe someone's ability to attract or seduce another person.
Spotify axes 17 per cent of workforce in third round of layoffs this year
Spotify says it's axing 17 per cent of its global workforce, the music streaming service's third round of layoffs this year as it moves to slash costs while focusing on becoming profitable.
Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Agnes Chow jumps bail and moves to Canada
One of Hong Kong's best-known pro-democracy activists who moved to Canada to pursue her studies said she would not return to the city to meet her bail conditions, becoming the latest politician to flee Hong Kong under Beijing's crackdown on dissidents.