project Overview

Ellsworth is a narrative-focused mystery/romance game about the relationship between two characters from high school to adulthood, told through their text message conversations. The player looks for keywords and clues in the conversation to jump around between different dates to uncover the story. There is a strong focus on the relationship between the characters as they navigate growing up in an economically deprived town, and decide what kind of people they want to become.

My work involved a complete overhaul of the existing story. Working with the creative director, I structured and wrote the main story, as well as lore elements and optional narrative paths.

story overhaul

After reading the existing story and through conversations with the developers, it quickly became clear that they wanted the focus of the story to be on the characters and the world, rather than the previous established mystery/thriller aspect. I felt it was important to find the voices of these characters and how they relate to each other, but also to subtly demonstrate how they change over time (the story takes place over nine years). I also wanted to explore Ellsworth the place as an example of decaying middle America that has been crippled by economic collapse and failed capitalism. For us to buy the relationship of these characters, it felt important to sell the reality of the place they grew up.

non-chronological narrative

The player takes on the role of Casey. They are viewing these messages in the present (commenting on them with their thoughts and reflections - sometimes hinting at what has happened since but largely leaving it a mystery). While the narrative is largely linear (with a few small exceptions), we wanted to jump back and forward in time to show the two characters in the formative years of their relationship in high school and then their reflections on it and how it reforms as they become adults. We do this in a similar way to games such as Her Story, where rather than choosing where we progress we follow links. There are two types of links in Ellsworth. “Element links” within Rowan and Casey’s conversation reveal visual or text elements (for example, a character might mention the name of a bar, we then click on the link and we’re shown a drinks menu or the front sign from Google Street view). The others are “story links”, these links move the story forward by ending the current message sequence and cutting to new one (sometimes years apart from the previous sequence).

The sample below shows the diagram of how I plotted the story, with the accompanying dialogue.

dialogue

The sample below is taken from around the halfway mark in the story, as the characters reflect on the death of Rowan’s father.