Explore revolutionary France with colourful historical characters, evade the police and find your daughter before she is caught up in yet another bloody revolution.
27th, March 2026, Edinburgh, UK: College Fun Games has just launched the demo of their first full-length game, Less Miserables: It’s a classic-style adventure game, and very unfaithful adaptation of the classic novel by Victor Hugo, which thankfully will not be entirely in song.
Play as ‘Claude Van Claude’: imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread, just released and on a desperate quest to find his daughter before she's caught in a violent revolution gripping the streets of Paris. In the 20 minute demo, you’ll solve puzzles by bartering with unscrupulous innkeepers, stealing unfashionable clothes, and buying small children, all while eluding capture from the ruthless police Inspector LaBleugh.
Part 'Monkey Island', part 'Allo 'Allo, Less Miserables aims to do for 'Les Misérables' what 'Life of Brian' did to The Bible, with legally British humour, and a modern hobo-based hint system. The game follows the known tropes, but is accessible for people who never pretended to sing from the barricades or see a three-headed monkey. You’ll play parody puzzles of Gwent, Curse of the Golden Idol and even deface Notre Dame. Fully hand-drawn, with 30 beautiful and/or deprived locations in Paris to explore, and dozens of historical characters, fully voiced by amazing stars of Edinburgh Fringe and stand-up, recorded in live-improv recording sessions.
The demo launches today on Steam and Itch, ahead of a Kickstarter campaign starting April 2nd. The 4 person team have already been developing the game for a year, including a field trip to Paris last March (with a 6 page feature in Debug magazine).
Already selected for exhibition at London Games Festival, Pocket Gamer Connect, GDLX, and Debug Indie Festival, the full game is currently self-published and aims to release in Q1 2027 on Steam and itch.io for Windows, Linux, and iOS, with at least German and French translations. Contact daniel@collegefun.games for any queries or interview requests with the team.
Websites: lessmiserables.com / collegefun.games
Teaser Trailer: https://youtu.be/uJ43ijLDlAA
Kickstarter: tiny.cc/lessmis
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4380030/Less_Miserables_Demo/
Itch.io: collegefungames.itch.io/less-miserables
Devlog: collegefun.games/blog
Mastodon: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@collegefungames
**ENDS**
About College Fun Games
Less Miserables is the second game from the Edinburgh, Scotland-based game studio, aiming to make point and click adventure games that tell stories with humour and heart.
CFG was founded in January 2024 by Daniel Turner, who brings 10 years experience running a software development company, and an astonishing 18 months of experience in game development. This includes the release of The Protagonish last year, a short adventure game where you don’t control the protagonist, our first game working together. For Less Miserables, he’s also been producer and lead writer.
Daniel started making games on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum when he was 5, and grew up with a love of classic PC adventure games. Professional art work comes from beautiful environments by Lucy Gillespie, with a background in TV and short feature animation, plus there’s amazing character and animation design from Elena Grossi, and software and writing wizardry from the award winning game developer Ewan Fisher.
Our aim is to make games as a team without ‘crunch’, where everyone from any background is given the freedom to do their best creative work. We pay fairly, work flexibly up-to 4 days a week, either in our beautiful Leith based office, at home, or our secret coffee hangout so we all have time for other creative projects. We are humans making games for humans, and don’t use any AI tools.
Persbericht
