Settling the French Historical Past: The Example of Lankhor Games

This analysis examines how French digital games from the late 1980s and early 1990s engaged with sensitive national history, specifically focusing on two titles by the studio Lankhor: Le Manoir de Mortevielle (1987) and Maupiti Island (1990). The study argues that while these games ostensibly function as noir-inspired detective adventures, they serve as vehicles for addressing France’s suppressed historical traumas, including collaboration with the Vichy regime and the violence of colonial expansion.

The methodology employs a social-semiotic model to evaluate the games' audiovisual narratives and ludonarrative elements—such as character representation, world-building, and player agency—against the backdrop of French social history. By analyzing the games' thematic subtexts, the research identifies Mortevielle as an allegory for the post-war "myth of resistance," where the silence of the game's characters mirrors the collective national denial regarding collaboration with Nazi Germany. Similarly, Maupiti Island is interpreted through a post-colonial lens, linking the game’s depiction of exploitation and racial hierarchy to the broader history of European colonial violence and its ideological precursors to the Holocaust.

The findings suggest that these games, despite their surface-level adherence to genre tropes, functioned as subtle instruments of historical revisionism. By embedding dark, unresolved social issues within the interactive framework of a mystery, Lankhor’s titles reflected a growing cultural consensus in France that sought to move beyond the state-sanctioned narratives of the post-war era. Ultimately, the analysis positions these early digital works as significant cultural artifacts that captured the evolving, often uncomfortable, discourse surrounding French national identity and its historical accountability.