At the French Direct AGM, Team Empreintes released a demo of their new title, The Granny Detective Society. The second game from the Angoulême-based developers, following Fireside Feeling, the game invites players to investigate through the eyes of a little mouse granny. This gave us the chance to ask them about the development of their games and the studio.
Point’n’Think : Could you introduce yourselves in a few words?
We are Jaximus and Vidu, and together we founded Team Empreinte in Angoulême in 2024. We love creating non-violent games that place emotion at the heart of the experience, with original gameplay mechanics that think outside the box.
PnT : The Granny Detective Society is a detective game featuring a granny mouse. How did you come up with the idea for this game?
At the moment, we’re exploring the concept of shifting perspectives. In Fireside Feelings, we approached this through the lens of empathy. Following that first game, we wanted to continue working on this theme but to tackle it from a different angle.
We thought about it and decided we wanted to explore the different ways of understanding the same scene: there is a reality, but there are as many experiences of that reality as there are different observers of it.
Building on this idea, we looked for a narrative framework that seemed to fit with this vision, and we came up with the idea of our grandmothers spending their days spying on their neighbourhood from their windows. We felt there was something universal and nostalgic about this idea, so we tried to take it further: what if the grandmothers were doing this because they belonged to a vast, top-secret spy network?
The fantasy of playing a spy grandmother was really exciting for us, so we tried to unravel the plot and see where it would take us.
PnT : What are the constraints involved in developing a detective game? How did you address these constraints or challenges? Are there any genre-specific rules that need to be followed, or that you followed?
The main challenge we faced was the disconnect between the story we wanted to tell and the financial resources needed to tell it.
For us, a good detective game rests on two pillars. On the one hand, you need a gripping story, with puzzles that make sense and have a real impact on the player. On the other, you need gameplay mechanics that are fluid, intuitive and enjoyable to use.
On the surface, these two aspects go hand in hand, but in production, they are actually two very different undertakings. In The Granny Detective Society, we particularly wanted to introduce new grannytectives with each investigation to keep the experience fresh. The problem is that each new chapter often involves new mechanics to design, develop and balance. Some investigations required five or six different chapters, which quickly became a significant challenge for a self-published studio like ours.
Added to this is another distinctive feature of the mystery game genre: it requires a great deal of playtesting. We need to find the right learning curve, ensure the difficulty increases gradually, avoid puzzles that are either too simple or, conversely, frustrating, and above all, give players the sense that they have figured out the solutions for themselves.
For the first time, we enlisted the help of Maurine Micol, known as WTF’UX on YouTube and Twitch, to carry out a UX audit of the game. Her guidance was a huge help in rethinking the onboarding process, clarifying certain systems and improving the overall understanding of the experience.
One of our main objectives was precisely for players to feel clever when solving the investigations. To achieve this, we had to strike a delicate balance between a very guided first demo, presented in January 2026, and a much more open second demo, in May 2026. Finding that happy medium took a lot of work, but Maurine’s input was invaluable in this process.
Today, we are very pleased with the result and the way the game guides players through their investigations.
PnT : How do you create puzzles like the ones in The Granny Detective Society? Was it straightforward? Restrictive? Difficult?
I must admit: it’s a real treat. We love it!
Our approach is to start by writing the game’s overarching story. Then, we flesh out the story for each chapter based on its specific mechanics.
Once this narrative foundation is in place, we create a large virtual whiteboard on which we list all the characters: their names, their professions, their relationships, as well as all the specific information needed for the chapter’s investigation.
We also break down each of their actions onto Post-it notes, which we organise into a large timeline. This allows us to coordinate events, check that everything is consistent, and build this grand ballet of characters evolving in parallel.
Once this structure feels solid, we tackle the investigation itself. For every piece of important information to be uncovered, we try to come up with between two and four different ways to access it. Our aim is to ensure that players never get stuck simply because they’ve missed a clue hidden away in a corner. We prefer to offer them several leads and let them find their own path to the solution.
Finally, we’ve included crosswords. In The Granny Detective Society, these serve as subtle clues designed to help players who feel lost. For example, in the prologue, one of the crosswords reads: ‘She only needs to go down one floor to get to the party. ” This clue encourages players to take an interest in the flat on the floor above, an area that was often overlooked during the initial playtests.
Once everything is in place, we begin the testing phases. We usually start with people who are already familiar with the game, then have novice players test the investigation. Their feedback then allows us to adjust the levels, clues and pace of progression to achieve the most satisfying experience possible.
PnT : This is your second game. Like Fireside Feeling, The Granny Detective Society also features anthropomorphic animals as characters. Why did you make this choice?
When we created Fireside Feelings, our aim was to design a system that fosters empathy between strangers.
In this context, anthropomorphic animals seem to us to be a good way of distancing ourselves from certain prejudices linked to origin, gender or other social markers.
At the time, I still knew very little about the furry community. Yet it is a community that has really embraced the game and has long been exploring issues similar to those that interested us: identity, the way we represent ourselves, or even the possibility of choosing one’s own character.
When we started working on the next project, we wanted it to be set in the same universe as Fireside Feelings. So continuing with anthropomorphic characters felt like a fairly natural choice.
Looking back, I realise that this choice also brings something very powerful to the writing. It allows us to tackle subjects deeply rooted in our reality (discrimination, systemic violence or power dynamics) whilst creating a slight shift in perspective. And paradoxically, this step back makes these themes even more visible. It’s as if the distance created by fiction allows us to see certain aspects of reality more clearly.
PnT : Let’s take another look at Fireside Feeling. It’s a conversation game where you open up to strangers by the fireside. In a way, the gameplay is asymmetrical, as there’s no live conversation. How do you develop a game like this? How does it work?
The concept behind Fireside Feelings is quite simple: you choose a conversation topic, then sit around a campfire with a stranger. This little campfire, called Étincelle, then asks you a question.
From there, we give players all the time they need to think, organise their thoughts and write their answer. Once they’ve finished, they discover the answer from the person sitting opposite them.
But this isn’t a response written on the spot. It’s a reply that person wrote earlier when they were playing Fireside Feelings themselves and, in turn, chatting with someone else. The game thus creates a chain of asynchronous conversations between strangers.
Of course, all the replies visible in the game are manually moderated by Jaximus or myself. We place great importance on this work, as it is essential that no aggressive or oppressive messages disrupt the sense of safety, gentleness and intimacy we are striving to create.
It’s a huge task, but also one of the most beautiful and moving experiences we’ve had as creators. And fortunately, the community repays us a hundredfold through its kindness, sincerity and the trust it places in us.
PnT : Where did the idea for Fireside Feelings come from? It reflects the state of today’s society, which is deeply concerned with mental health, diversity and otherness.This approach is all the more interesting at a time when society is more prone to conflict and extremes, rather than nuance and discussion, as seen in Fireside Feelings.
The idea behind Fireside Feelings was to create a space where empathy could emerge between strangers. That was our primary intention. We felt that intolerance, violence and polarisation were on the rise almost everywhere, and we felt it was important to offer an experience that combats these trends.
To achieve this, we went through many phases of experimentation, self-reflection, failures and successes. During development, we were particularly fortunate to meet Ziba, the co-creator of Kind Words, a game with an aim quite similar to our own. He shared a quote with us that profoundly influenced the way we designed the game:
“When I think about a mechanic, I look at the solution found by social media and do the exact opposite.”
This idea resonates strongly with a conviction that guides much of our work: it is the systems that shape the behaviour of the people who use them.
Social media is designed to capture our attention, maximise interaction and generate engagement. It therefore makes sense that its mechanisms encourage certain behaviours. For our part, we wanted to foster empathy. We therefore built a system designed with this objective in mind.
In Fireside Feelings, players choose a discussion topic and are then given a question. They have as much time as they need to think, write, erase, rephrase and revise their answer. Once they have finished, they discover the answer from another person who has followed exactly the same process.
We have removed any form of performance-based reward. The game does not value the quantity of responses produced, nor any notion of what constitutes a ‘good’ answer. The reward is intrinsic: it lies in personal reflection and in connecting with others.
What touches us most today is seeing that the community has embraced this mindset. A simple example concerns trigger warnings. Players can flag certain sensitive topics to protect those who prefer not to be confronted with them. This feature is neither highlighted nor rewarded. Yet a very large part of the community takes the time to use it spontaneously.
Every time we open a conversation for moderation and discover that trigger warnings have already been added by the players themselves, we are surprised and moved. The fact that they choose to look out for others, without any particular reward and without even knowing them, is undoubtedly the finest possible validation of the intention that guided the game’s creation.
PnT : Fireside Feeling covers a wide range of topics, from the light-hearted to the heavy. Isn’t it a bit of a burden or difficult to be the platform for these sometimes complex stories? Is there any form of moderation? If so, how does it work?
Honestly, yes, it can be a bit of a burden at times.
But we were lucky enough to meet Ziba, the co-creator of Kind Words, quite early on in development. By discovering the scale of the moderation work he was doing and the solutions he had put in place, we were able to anticipate some of these issues.
Today, we do indeed moderate all discussions manually. However, we have developed various tools to help us with this work. I won’t go into the details of how they work for fairly obvious reasons, but they help us carry out an initial sorting of the conversations.
This initial sorting is also enhanced by part of the community: once the game is over, some players can take part in a mode that allows them to share the emotions inspired by the discussions they read. This feedback helps us to more easily identify conversations that require special attention.
After this stage, we review and moderate the discussions that stand out from the rest. And, quite honestly, it is extremely rare for us to come across conversations that are uninteresting.
Some tackle particularly difficult subjects (grief, death, sexual and gender-based violence, or other painful experiences) and can be emotionally draining to read. Yet they are almost always sincere and deeply human.
In the end, we approve around 80% of the discussions we review. Despite the emotional toll this can take, this work remains above all a very powerful experience, because it gives us access to a vast amount of personal accounts, reflections and moments of vulnerability shared with great trust.
PnT : The Granny Detective Society is therefore your second game. What lessons did you learn from the first game?
The main lesson we learnt from Fireside Feelings is that, as an independent studio with an original idea, you have to trust in what makes your project unique and focus your efforts on that.
During development, we worked with a publisher who didn’t have much faith in the potential of the Fireside Feelings concept. Fearing that the core idea alone wouldn’t be enough to capture players’ interest, they encouraged us to develop a whole system for customising the campfire.
We devoted a huge amount of time and energy to it. Looking back, we estimate that this accounted for nearly 30% of our production effort.
However, when we observe players’ behaviour today, we see that they are ultimately not very interested in customising the campfire. What attracts them and leaves a lasting impression is the conversation experience itself, which was, after all, at the heart of the project from the very beginning.
This experience taught us a vital lesson: when you have a strong core idea, it’s better to invest your resources in making it as rich, accessible and memorable as possible, rather than trying to compensate for it with peripheral features.
An independent studio cannot compete with a AAA title in terms of the quantity of content or systems. However, it can offer a unique experience that no one else provides, through the purity and radical nature of its concept. Today, we try to keep this idea in mind in every production decision we make.
PnT : With your presence at the AG French Direct, you’ve seen a massive surge in wishlist adds (congratulations!). How do you feel about that? Surprised? Happy? And speaking of which, there’s been a lot of talk about adding the game to wishlists and the importance of wishlists – what difference does it make to you when people do that?
Yes, we’ve just had two rather fantastic weeks!
The AG French Direct was a brilliant spotlight moment, followed by Thinky Direct, the release of our new demo and the launch of our latest trailer. All of this happened in a very short space of time and created an extremely positive buzz around the game.
To be honest, we don’t know exactly what sparked this buzz. It’s probably a combination of all these factors. What we do know, however, is that we were hoping to gain around 3,000 wishlists between May and June, and we’re already approaching 15,000. That’s a huge leap forward.
For a studio like ours, wishlists are a very important indicator. According to our estimates, reaching around 25,000 wishlists would allow us to envisage reasonable profitability for the project. Seeing this figure approach so quickly is therefore both reassuring and extremely motivating.
As for the importance of wishlists on Steam, it is twofold.
The first reason is quite simple: when a game is released, everyone who has added it to their wishlist receives a notification from Steam. This therefore represents an initial audience that is directly informed of the launch.
But the main issue lies elsewhere. In 2025, nearly 19,000 games were released on Steam, which is more than fifty every day. Faced with such a volume of releases, the platform must constantly decide which games to highlight and which will remain virtually invisible.
Wishlists are among the indicators used to gauge interest in a project before its release. The more a game accumulates, the more Steam considers it worthy of being shown to new players.
According to the estimates available to us, nearly 65% of the games released that year generated less than €1,000 in revenue. Behind this figure lie many projects that simply failed to gain sufficient visibility from Steam.
For an independent studio, wishlists are therefore not just a marketing indicator. They are one of the few ways to signal to Steam that there is genuine interest in the game. In this context, accumulating wishlists becomes almost a matter of economic survival.
PnT : You’ve also released Fireside Journey, an interactive journey through your creations. How did you come up with the idea for this title? How did you think of this highly original way of sharing the behind-the-scenes of your creative process?
Fireside Journey is probably the perfect example of a game that wasn’t a commercial success. To be precise, it brought in €287 on Steam.
But that was never the point.
After the release of Fireside Feelings, our publisher approached us with a fairly standard proposal: to use our artwork to create an artbook that could be included in a Supporter Pack alongside the game’s soundtrack.
The idea left us a bit perplexed. An artbook is a lovely thing, but we now had in our hands a medium capable of telling stories in a far richer way: the video game itself.
At the time, we were regularly taking part in game jams and were used to creating games in forty-eight hours. So we set ourselves a challenge: to spend a month creating a little game that would tell the story behind the scenes of Fireside Feelings.
The idea was to offer a sort of ‘directors’ audio commentary’, but in an interactive format. Rather than leafing through a book or listening to an interview, players could discover our creative process through the very language of video games.
Obviously, we had vastly underestimated the scale of the work involved.
We had to record over fifteen hours of audio, cut up every sentence of every recording, translate them, synchronise the subtitles, animate the characters during the conversations, and then build the entire game around this content. Looking back, it was a completely absurd and unreasonable undertaking.
Especially as we knew from the outset that a project like this would probably not even cover a month’s development costs.
But that wasn’t the point. This project made sense to us. It was the kind of content we would have loved to discover as players, so we simply decided to create it. And it was also an opportunity to develop a lighter, less rigid game—a bit of an outlet.
And today, when we look at the result, we’re immensely proud of it.
PnT : Do you have any advice for your readers? A recommendation to make, or simply a short message for them?
Advice? The further we go along life’s path, the more we discover that the certainties we thought were rock-solid are actually quite fragile. Over time, we realise above all that it’s rare to be 100% right about anything.
So we’ll be careful not to preach.
On the other hand, if you fancy having a chat with us, sharing an idea, a story or simply a moment, never hesitate to come and say hello. We’ll probably be somewhere around a campfire, putting the world to rights.
And in those circumstances, there’s always room for one more lovely person around the fire.