l'Abbaye des Morts

Plot

In the 13th century, the Cathars, clerics who preached about life without material aspirations, were persecuted by the Catholic Church and expelled out of the Languedoc region in France. One of them, called Jean Raymond, found an old church in which to hide from crusaders, not knowing that beneath its ruins lay buried an ancient evil.

Trailer

The game

L'Abbaye des Morts is an exploration platformer in which faith is your only weapon.
Recover twelve Cathar crosses lost in an abandoned abbey and discover its dark secret while avoiding its many dangers. Black backgrounds, single color sprites and monophonic sounds are a proper fit for this unsettling story where things are left to the imagination.

Key features

• Look and feel of a ZX Spectrum game
• A map with 23 screens to explore
• Riddles and hints to find items
• Around 30 minutes of game length (once mastered)

Screenshots

Facts

• This little project was created at nights during a trip to the south of France. It was like a jam straight out of what we learned in the Languedoc.
• Some people consider it a cult game.
• It was inspired by the tragic history of the Cathars and by fixed screen platform games for ZX Spectrum computers like Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy, Dynamite Dan…
• Its code was rewritten and open sourced by MoonWatcher and since then it has been ported to many systems, including some I never heard about before.
• The circle for this ZX-like game was closed when DaRkHoRaCe and Jerri created a version for actual Spectrum computers that was produced by RetroWorks in cassette format.