iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director

Mickaël Newton @mickaelnewton.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Mon appel aux créateurs JV français : je dois sauver la Bourse Jeux Vidéo d’ici la fin de l’année. Pour cela, je veux monter en 1 mois, un bundle de jeux vidéo dont les fonds iront à la BJV. Le plus de jeux possibles et trouver comment mettre en place cela de façon optimale. Pouvez-vous RT svp ?

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DannyFonz @dannyfonz.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Tides of Tomorrow sort aujourd'hui sur PC, PS5 et Xbox Series X ! J'ai eu l'immense chance de travailler sur les 3 trailers principaux ainsi que sur certaines cutscenes du jeu (dont les cutscenes de fin donc faudra finir le jeu pour voir mon travail 👀). youtu.be/miLQSW3n1jA?...

youtu.be

Tides of Tomorrow - Release Trailer | PS5 Games

YouTube video by PlayStation

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Reposted by Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director

Bouzny @bouzny.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Très honoré d'apporter ma petite pierre à cet édifice contre le fascisme le week-end prochain ! Et très content de faire revenir une fois encore Adalia pour cette grande cause ! Et comme on dit: FUCK ICE !

Reprise d'une couverture du magazine L'Equipe, avec comme titre "Elle Revient" et une image d'Adalia de Volador du jeu En Garde !

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Reposted by Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director

Felipe @non4to.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

This week I asked my friends if they had a "pirate vybes" game to recommend me. Little I knew that what I needed was En Garde! Not only I get to be a parry god, but I also felt like inside one of Jackie Chan's movies using any stuff in the environment to help me during the fights!

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Seldell @seldell.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

Toujours plus de jeux indés pour 2026 : c'est le 3e épisode de la compilation qui ajoute un nouveau lot d'une vingtaine de titres qui ponctueront l'année ! www.youtube.com/watc... Partages très appréciés ♥

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Lesbian Swordfighting is becoming an actual game genre

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

Tellement de reviews en si peu de temps c'est ouf aussi !! 😱 Bravo 🪲

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Jake Birkett - Veteran Indie @greyalien.bsky.social · 07/11/2024

NEW GAME ANNOUNCEMENT! Shadowhand Solitaire is coming very soon to Steam and @itch.io Please wishlist and share, thank you! store.steampowered.com/app/3199380/... We're super proud of this swashbuckling solitaire adventure and we think you'll love it!

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 02/11/2024

I've just published an extended version of my thread on Medium, with better reading experience and lots of extra nerdy info 🤠 Read it here: link.medium.com/oyCn6wyRcOb Hope you'll like it!

link.medium.com

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 02/11/2024

I've just published an extended version of this thread on Medium, with better reading experience and lots of extra nerdy info 🤠 Read it here: link.medium.com/oyCn6wyRcOb Hope you'll like it!

link.medium.com

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 02/11/2024

By the way, regarding my fascination for swashbucklers. Disney’s Aladdin, The Mask of Zorro AND the first Pirates of the Caribbean, 3 movies I can’t stop rambling about... were all written by the same dudes , @tedelliott.bsky.social and Terry Rossio. I guess I should thank them? 😄

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 02/11/2024

Exactement ! C'est de cette réflexion qu'est venue l'idée d'En Garde! à la base 😊

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 02/11/2024

Animated GIFs don't work on Bluesky? Some of the pictures in my thread were supposed to be moving... 😢

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 02/11/2024

Je crois qu'il y a des systèmes de Panache ou équivalent dans tous les jeux du genre 😆 Pour le coup, les JDR de cape et d'épée / mousquetaires sont assez bien représentés ! (il y a aussi 7th Sea...) C'est vraiment en jeux vidéo que leur rareté est étonnante

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 02/11/2024

Ahah je sais pas ce que ça vaut, j'ai littéralement découvert son existence en cherchant "musketeer game" sur Google 😂

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 02/11/2024

Oh non je connais pas celui là 😮 en JDR français il y a aussi les Lames du Cardinal

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

Now, you can re-read this whole thread and replace "Musketeer" with "Zorro" - it works too :D

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

Moreover, new generation of artists are rediscovering the works of Alexandre Dumas. Check out the Dumariolles collective's amazing work! Maybe one day, some company will finally take a chance to make a proper musketeers video game adaptation. Let's just hope they'll get it right! 24/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

But who knows what the future holds? There are still movies and TV series being made about the Musketeers, and some video games in adjacent settings (En Garde!, Greedfall, Assassin's Creed Unity...). 'Sacre Bleu' is a promising indie comedy platformer coming soon! 23/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

Since video games tend to stick to mainstream, we do get some great pirate games! Basically, captain Jack Sparrow killed any chance for d'Artagnan and the boys to star in their own video game. 22/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

Pirate films had always been, initially, a sub-genre of swashbuckler. But in the 2000's, swashbuckling became synonym with pirates. Pirates became the dominant genre, and in the process, overshadowed all the other old-fashioned fencers in tights. 21/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

According to its authors, The Curse of the Black Pearl was designed from the ground-up as a revival of the classic Swashbuckler formula, with added grittiness and fantastical elements thrown in. It was a mega-hit, and made pirate stories mainstream again. 20/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

In the early 2000's, and despite Antonio Banderas' best efforts as Zorro, classic Swashbuckler films had fallen out of fashion. This was until... 2003, when Pirates of the Caribbean came out! Remember how kids described En Garde! as a "pirate game"? 19/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

Why none of these games ever gets made? Well, my explanation is that popular video games tend to inspire from mainstream settings. Medieval fantasy, sci-fi, zombies, you name it. And unfortunately for me, musketeers haven't been mainstream for... a while. 18/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

I've heard about several devs and studios having ideas for a musketeer game, here and there. In a blog post for Playstation, Brian Fleming from Suckerpunch told they considered musketeers as their next game setting, before going for feudal Japan with Ghost of Tsushima. 17/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

So, there's still no proper musketeer game then. En Garde! isn't one. Why isn't anyone else doing it? I've been wondering for years. Apart from a bunch of obscure abandonware, it's still an unexplored setting. 16/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

En Garde! was made as a melting pot of references. Older generations will "get" the nostalgic swashbuckler feel. Some younger players have described it as a pirate game - which is fine too! It also came out right during the Puss in Boots hype 🐱 (Art by @casynuf.bsky.social) 15/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

Initially, I barely knew about all this, I only had some clichés in mind - sword fights, feathered hats, swinging chandeliers... But that's what works so well about En Garde!' concept. You don't need to know. The swashbuckler tropes are rooted in popular imagination. 14/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

We loved the hispanic flair, and the Golden Age Spain setting also felt more original to us than doing French Musketeers - which is ironic, considering my initial thought on the lack of Musketeer video games. 13/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

With En Garde!, we wanted to pay homage to the swashbuckler genre as a whole. We chose to set the game in 17th century Spain, because the genre initially came from here ("comedia de capa y espada" were theater plays from that period). 12/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

I also realized some of my favorite video games could arguably qualify as "swashbuckling" experiences - Uncharted (as described by @amyhennig.bsky.social herself), Assassin's Creed Black Flag... But none of them actually recreated the "classic" definition of swashbuckler. 11/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

Several Disney/Dreamworks films draw from swashbuckler tropes too. En Garde! owes a lot of its light-hearted tone and comedy to it. Aladdin checks most of the boxes. Flynn Rider from Tangled is a typical swashbuckler protagonist, and an hommage to actor Errol Flynn. 10/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

Then, the tropes and "vibes" of the genre expanded and evolved into other things. Indiana Jones was described as a swashbuckler by Lucas and Spielberg. Guardians of the Galaxy is swashbuckling in space. 9/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

During Hollywood golden age, Swashbucklers shared the spotlight with Westerns. The Three Musketeers alone has more than 50 film and TV adaptations listed on Wikipedia. 8/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

In classic literature and cinema, swashbuckler was big. The Three Musketeers, Robin Hood, Zorro, The Princess Bride, basically every pirate story, and many others, nowadays forgotten. 7/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

The french term (de cape et d'épée) interestingly morphed into "cloak and dagger" in english. Cloak and dagger stories are more about espionage, which is also sometimes a component of Swashbuckler. 6/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

It's also a very french genre. We call it de cape et d'épée - "of cape and sword". We have our own classics. In french, the name implies less "pirate adventures" and more "dueling noblemen". It's also seen as old school, even more so than in english. 5/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

Swashbuckler was a subgenre of historical fiction, with adventure, romance and intrigue galore, featuring sword fights between charming scoundrels, damsels in distress and mustache-twirling villains. Basically all of my favorite things in the world! 4/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

What caused that shift of focus for En Garde? Well, when I was doing research for the game's concept, I quickly stopped looking at Alexandre Dumas' musketeers only, as I digged into the rich legacy of the Swashbuckler genre. 3/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

In 2024, there STILL isn't any musketeer game. Because En Garde! is not a proper "musketeer" game in the end. It doesn't star a crew of french braggart noblemen. We set the action in Spain, and our protagonist is a vigilante, closer to Zorro than to d'Artagnan. 2/24

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

"Why isn't there any musketeer video game?" 🤺 In 2017, as a game design student, I pitched a game inspired by The Three Musketeers. This game turned into En Garde!, which we released in 2023 ✨ Despite that, I'm still asking that same question to this day. Thread 🧵

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Florian Verdier @floriannechekuv.bsky.social · 19/10/2024

Bonsoir ! J'ai créé un kit de démarrage pour les devs' français et françaises de jeux vidéos. Je suis conscient qu'il en manque beaucoup, alors n'hésitez pas à vous manifester en message privé ! Plus que jamais, n'hésitez pas à faire tourner ^^ go.bsky.app/AkoEdbY

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 20/10/2024

I said I would post stuff here 'soon' but it's been almost A YEAR 😂 Now that I've gained some new followers it motivated me to finally do it I promise 😤

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 20/10/2024

Oh je me demandais pourquoi je gagnais des followers 😂 merci de m'avoir inclus, ça va me motiver à poster des trucs 😤

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 04/10/2024

OMG thanks youuu I was wondering if he ever did some fencing scenes haha

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merugezu 🌭 @merugezu.com · 10/01/2024

Les traditions, c'est important. Comme chaque année on s'est retrouvés pour parler de l'année écoulée. Un épisode plein de passion, de joie, de ressentiment, de blasitude, de dinosaures, de voitures, de pantins, de dragons et de non-sens. Dispo partout, genre là : open.spotify.com/episode/74oa...

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Adrien Poncet ⚔️ Game Director @ledrien.bsky.social · 03/11/2023

I might start posting some threads about En Garde!'s development soon

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