Cave! Cave! Deus Videt.

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Visual novel

2013

Prototyped in 2013 for the international Bosch Art Game competition sponsored by the Dutch Jheronimus Bosch 500 foundation, CAVE! CAVE! DEUS VIDET. ("Beware! Beware! God sees.") is an award-winning narrative episodic video game dedicated to the famous 16th-century Flemish painter.

Based on visual novel mechanics (branching interactive story), CAVE! CAVE! DEUS VIDET. is an art-fi (science fiction applied to art) journey through a world permeated with magical realism, in which the Netherlands of 1499, the fuzzy mind of a present-day teenager, and the hallucinated “Wonderlands” of Bosch’s paintings merge.

The story of Episode 0 begins at the National Museum in Lisbon when Hoodie, a lonely 17-year-old punk rock and Star Wars enthusiast, meets a strange individual who seems to know too many things about one of Bosch’s most enigmatic paintings, the Triptych of the Temptation of St. Anthony.

The minimalist visual style, which draws on imagery ranging from graphic design to Tarot cards, from Méliès’ cinema to Rorschach tests, is designed to highlight even further the sudden intrusions into the game world of the countless, surreal original details of the painter’s works.

The narrative mystery of CAVE! CAVE! continues in the never-before-seen Episode 1 in Madrid, where the fates of Hoodie and three women – Meg, Yerma, and Mrs. Blake – are intertwined with the story of one of the artist’s best-known masterpieces: the triptych of The Garden of Earthly Delights.

press

credits

A game by
We Are Muesli
Claudia Molinari
Matteo Pozzi

Visual design
Claudia Molinari

Game writing
Matteo Pozzi

Music
Craig Storm (Monroeville Music Center) and MEGA

Spanish localization
Gonzalo Salinas

Android development
Francesco Fontana