This October, we are celebrating 10 years working alongside talented artists and creators to come up with unique and original games!

To mark this milestone, we’re having a massive sale including all of our game catalogue, with discount going from 30% to 80% off!

Thank you for getting on this journey with us, here’s to many more games ! 🎂

Whether you are new to the ARTE Experience or have been there since the beginning, we want to thank you and let you know more about what’s to come, so stay tuned for all the big things to come !

From August 18th to 27th, To Hell with the Ugly will be featured among other cool indie games, with a playable free demo and a discount !

Thanks for your support !

Find us on Twitter : lapoulenoirejv @ARTE_Interactif

Get 20% off the game right now!

We really hope that you enjoy playing the game as much as we enjoyed making it.

If you’d like to support it and spread the word, you can help us get to 10 reviews by sharing what you think about it!

Want to know more about what it’s like to adapt a novel into a video game? Check out the latest issue of our newsletter[so.arte], where Fiona Rosette (game and narrative designer of To Hell with the Ugly) talks about her experience!

And lastly, thank you to everyone who reviewed the game. The support and feedback are much appreciated!

They are talking about our game!

• Linux Game Consortium[linuxgameconsortium.com]
  
• The XBox Hub[www.thexboxhub.com]

Rocky is a 20 year old young man with a certain charm that doesn’t go unnoticed. After a night out at the Zooty Slammer, he wakes up in a strange hospital, kidnapped and drugged.
Whatever they did to him last night, they did it. And now it’s too late for apologies, he needs to get to the bottom of this…
Rocky style.


To mark the release of the game, ARTE and La Poule Noire are offering you a sneak preview of the game's first hour. Discover Rock and his story, his kidnapping and his battle for truth. 👊🤜

Can you tell us more about La Poule Noire ?

La Poule Noire is a 'SCOP' (a worker cooperative) composed of video game craftspeople, which was founded by three friends who met at ENJMIN, and who spent a few years in the gaming industry, at companies of all scales. We released our first game 'Edgar, Bokbok in Boulzac' in 2020, and our new game To Hell With The Ugly will be available on Steam very soon. We are now 6 people working for the cooperative and we punctually get outside help for some tasks. Most of them work in Angoulême, at the moment I am the only one working from Lyon.

Tell us about yourself

I've been working on indie games for more than 7 years (2Dark, There is no Game), and occasionally on board games (Unlock, Wild Space). Now, I'm an associate-employee at LPN, and I've been a Game Artist there for 5 years. I am a kind of Swiss Army knife. My job is to define the artistic direction of our games. I also take care of the asset creation (characters, scenery, UI), integrate, and sometimes animate them in the Unity game engine. I build the scenes of our games (Level Design, trigger placements, staging levels...), with the precious help of Adrien Marchand, David Duriot, and Clément Duquesne. I also work closely with Fiona Rosette, our Game Designer.

How did you adapt a novel into a video game?

Our game To Hell With The Ugly is the adaptation of a novel by Boris Vian. In his book, the author gives us a lot of details about the environment, which plunges us directly into Los Angeles in the 50's, we wanted it to be as immersive in our game, it was a starting point for the construction of the Art Direction.

There was a huge amount of reference work, in films, in architecture, objects, and clothes of the time... It was a challenge to represent L.A., a city we didn't know, at a time before we were even born. Boris Vian had never been to the United States either and said he was offering a fantasized vision of the American society, so we also allowed ourselves to offer a semi-realistic representation of L.A. in the 1950s.

In the novel, Boris Vian criticizes the superficial side of humans by inventing caricatured characters. By choosing a semi-realistic style for our characters, we were able to magnify certain character traits.

We echoed the traditional "animation classics" of the 50s and 60s thanks to the frame-by-frame animations made by Gaelle Roques for the fights and the scripted sequences. Finally, we wanted the color palette to be an integral part of the game's art direction: The fans are running high, we are in LA, the mercury is rising, the hero Rock Bailey is hot under the collar in this story. All of this evokes warm colors!

How do you feel about the nomination of To Hell With the Ugly at IGF?

The nomination of To Hell with the Ugly in the Excellence in Visual Art category of the IGF was a huge surprise, we didn't expect it at all and we are very proud that the game is represented, especially alongside Tunic, which we find magnificent. It's a victory for us that a game designed without crunch and in the respect of employees' well-being, can also be recognized.

Any plans for the future?

The release of To Hell With The Ugly will be announced very soon. For the moment we are working on our next project, a more intimate original creation.

🥳 The Steam Mystery Fest has started!
For this occasion, we propose you to discover To Hell With The Ugly for free and for a limited time.


🔍 Search for clues, gather evidence, make the right deductions and find out why beautiful people disappear in this 1950s LA.

📖 Inspired by Boris Vian's novel and film noir, To Hell With the Ugly takes you on a sleazy mystery adventure in which you must shed light on the whole affair...

Nous recherchons des personnes intéressées pour tester To Hell With The Ugly.

ARTE organise plusieurs sessions de playtests afin d'échanger autour de notre jeu, actuellement en cours de développement. Ces sessions nous permettrons d'explorer et de regrouper vos différents points de vue afin d'orienter la suite de la production.

Pour vous inscrire ➡️ : https://forms.gle/8qX2TiZVnSygmg648
Joueur-se ou non, tous les profils sont les bienvenus !

Nous reviendrons vers vous au plus vite afin de vous informer si votre profil correspond.
#indiedev #playtest

During STEAM NEXT FEST, meet a part of the team behind TO HELL WITH THE UGLY.
Discover a game inspired by noir novels, mixing fight, exploration and investigation.