Wednesdays: Meet the Team
Hello, and thank you for subscribing to Wednesdays newsletter.
Some of you subscribed more than 6 months ago, so here’s a quick reminder: Wednesdays is that colorful video game about growing up after child sexual abuse, remember?
The game has not been properly announced yet, and it’s still a bit early to give you more details about it, but I can tell you everything about the wonderful people making it.
Exaheva
Let’s answer the question that you’re dying to ask: “Who made the gorgeous key art we just saw above?” Well, that’s Exaheva. And I have great news for you: she’s also the one who hand-drew the whole game (yes, hand-drew—you read that right!).
We’ll dive deeper into the art process of Wednesdays in a future newsletter, but until then, let’s talk more about Exaheva
Exaheva is a comic artist living in Bruxelles. If you’re in France/Belgium, you can probably find her last series Mekka Nikki in every good bookstore. Mekka Nikki is a kid friendly epic story involving robots, magical powers, foreign planets and lesbians.
If you don’t read French, I can recommend my personal favorite of hers which you can read online. I have to warn you though: Despacito will never sound the same again.
Exaheva also makes video games, or I should say: “interactive comics”. I highly recommend you to try out her Still Heroes (Itch/Steam), which is, in my opinion, the very best interactive comic you can find out there.
If that wasn’t enough Exaheva is also a musician! Her new EP Super Gender Dysphoria II Turbo is out and you should give it a listen if you’re into noisy-ambient-pop. My personal favorite is Google Street View.
Find Exaheva on the internets:
Mastodon - Instagram - Bluesky - Twitter - Soundcloud - Website
Pierre Corbinais
I guess we have to talk about me at some point. Since doing it first or last would be a bit gauche, let’s do it right now, in second position.
So, hi, I’m Pierre, and I’m the writer of Wednesdays. I’m also the one writing the awesome newsletters landing in your mailbox. I don’t want to spoil too much but there’s great stuff coming your way! (hmm… maybe overselling a newsletter is a bit gauche too… oh well!)
I’m a video game writer and worked on a few games you might have heard of such as Bury Me My Love, Haven or Road 96.
Some might also know me for my curating work on websites such as Oujevipo where I used to cover small free weird indie games or Shake That Button where I (still try to) cover alternative controllers and playful installations.
What else? errrr… recently I’ve been taking lots of pictures with my Game Boy camera, and they have been exhibited in a rather prestigious gallery, so I guess I’m also a photographer now? You can find my best pictures on this Mastodon thread.
Find me on the internets
Mastodon - Instagram - Bluesky - Twitter - Website
Christophe Galati
Christophe Galati was the first to join Wednesdays’ adventure. He’s our main programmer and also helped a lot with the writing.
Chris is a true Jack of all trades when it comes to game development. He can code, write, design, do pixel-art… You might know him for his 2018 game Save Me Mr Tako which he made all by himself (except for the music).
Save Me Mr Tako is an impressive tribute to the Game Boy era. Mixing RPG and platformer elements, it can stand proudly between Link’s Awakening and Kirby’s Dream Land (that’s my opinion anyway). While its first release was sullied with publishing issues, you can find the new Definitive Edition on PC and Switch.
Aside from Wednesdays, Chris is currently working on his next big project : Tako no Himitsu: Ocean of Secret. This time, Chris is going full RPG and is paying homage to the Game Boy Advance.
While it's not as straightforward as Wednesdays, Tako no Himitsu is a game about trauma too. Maybe that can interest you as well? The Kickstarter campaign ended successfully a few months ago and you can already wishlist the game on Steam!
Find Christophe on the internets
Mastodon - Bluesky - Instagram - Twitter - Website
Virginia B. Fernson
Virginia is our sound designer and composer. They previously worked on TV, commercials, as well as video games with the studio Accidental Queens, but Wednesdays will be their first released video game project, so give them a warm welcome !
When they’re not helping other folks materialize their vision, Virginia composes for their own projects. From 2009 to 2021, they have been the lead guitarist and singer of the atmospheric/progressive/alternative rock band Skinsitive. If you’re into Nine Inch Nails or PJ Harvey, this should be right up your alley!
More recently, Virginia has been focusing on a brand new project: Lorsque Les Volcans Dorment (When The Volcanoes Sleep), a feminist musical collective committed to creating a safe space of expression for people in gender minorities, united around the experience of trauma.
Mixing post-rock and spoken words, Lorsque Les Volcans Dorment welcomes various performers on stage to tell their own stories accompanied by the band. I got to see their very first performance and I can tell you you don’t want to miss that if they’re coming near you.
The first Lorsque Les Volcans Dorment album should be released around the same time as Wednesdays so you’ll probably hear about it again!
Find Virginia on the internets
Instagram - Lorsque les Volcans Dorment
Nico Nowak
Remember when I said Exaheva drew the whole game? I lied. Blatantly. Because a big part of Wednesdays isn’t actually hand-drawn…but pixel-art! And that’s Nico’s job!
Nico lives for retro techs : retro cameras, retro phones, retro consoles… She thus seemed like a fitting choice to draw the retro video game embedded inside Wednesdays (Patience! I’ll tell you more about it in a future newsletter).
Nico has been drawing pixels for years. You might already have seen her work in the infamous There is no Game: Wrong Dimension (which, spoiler alert, is actually a game, and a great one), or through the communication of various cybersecurity collectives.
Nico has also been working on Christophe’s Tako no Himitsu I talked about earlier, which, funnily, is purely coincidental!
Find Nico on the internets
Mastodon - Instagram - Pixelfed - ArtStation - Website
Diane Landais
Diane was the last addition to Wednesdays Team, when we realized we might have underestimated the amount of work and might need a second programmer. She’s the reason the game will actually be playable with a controller (among many other things).
Diane is the co-founder of Accidental Queens, a french video game studio dedicated to exploring new narrative techniques while conveying social values and meaningful messages to a broad and diverse audience.
If you haven’t played them already, I highly recommend their games: they’re short, cheap, sweet, and fit in the pocket. A Normal Lost Phone and Another Lost Phone are thrilling investigations inside the intimacy of an unlocked phone. Alt Frequencies is a time-travel story told through radio airwaves.
Find Diane on the internets
Florent Maurin
Through his company The Pixel Hunt, Florent is Wednesdays’ co-producer. He’s been in charge of all the crucial yet boring stuff like… getting people paid!
The Pixel Hunt is a video game studio with a focus on reality-inspired games, i.e games that sound depressing but actually aren’t. Bury Me My Love tells the story of a Syrian refugee seeking asylum in Europe, Inua recounts the tale of a historical shipwreck in the Arctic and The Wreck is a gut-wrenching story about death and grief.
You now understand why I approached Florent with my game about child sexual abuse…
Besides Wednesdays, Florent is currently working on Ithaca, a closed set game dealing with exo-anxiety and eco-terrorism. This sounds fun!
Find Florent on the internets
Instagram - Bluesky - Twitter - Tiktok - Website
Of course, many more fabulous folks have worked or are still working on the project but this email is getting quite long already.
In future newsletters, I will dive deeper into the process of making such an usual game: how Wednesdays was designed, how its art was made, the creative constraints we used… So if you’re into that kind of stuff, make sure to subscribe to the newsletter if you haven’t already.
We’re obviously trying to gather a small community around the game before the official announcement, so please feel free to share this newsletter to your friends and follow me/Wednesdays on social media:
Mastodon - Instagram - Bluesky - Twitter
See you next time!
Pierre