Elsinore (video game)

Laertes and Hamlet duel as Ophelia watches. The journal and other ways the player can see what is happening in Elsinore Castle are found in the top left, while a map shows Ophelia's current location in the top right.

Elsinore is a point-and-click adventure game in which the player controls Hamlet's Ophelia as she experiences a time loop leading up to the tragedy at the end of the play.[1] During the four days leading up to the events described at the end of Hamlet, the player is able to move Ophelia throughout Elsinore Castle and have Ophelia talk with its residents in order to try and manipulate the outcome of events. The conversations the player has Ophelia hold with other castle residents often leads to unforeseen outcomes in which tragedy still occurs in other ways— every time Ophelia dies, the time loop begins again, four days before the end of Hamlet.

To manipulate the events in Elsinore, the player is able to talk with people in the castle about events that they have seen or expect to occur. The game provides a "Hearsay" menu, which indicates subjects that Ophelia can bring up to people in the castle based on what she has witnessed.[2] As Ophelia goes through multiple loops and witnesses scenes, she remembers these when she wakes up again and can bring them up to other characters.[2] The game includes a timeline that shows the player possible permutations that they can be aware of, showing both the location of an event to happen and the time of it so Ophelia can easily witness it. Outside of Ophelia's deaths, the game has 13 unique endings that are available to the player which change based on the player's choices throughout the game.[2]

The game hews closely to the plot of Hamlet at its core, but also contains significant changes from both the source material and how it was traditionally performed. The game begins with Ophelia experiencing a vision, which shows the deaths of everyone in Elsinore Castle. The player is then able to try to manipulate the events of the game to avoid the events of the play Hamlet. If the player does nothing, the events of Hamlet unfold by default and everyone dies.[3] Development of Elsinore began in 2010.[3]

Some major differences include that Ophelia is assassinated instead of killing herself (which the player must work to stop), and that Ophelia and Laertes both have much larger roles in the play. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are both women, Ophelia and Laertes are both people of color and have experienced discrimination because of it, Othello appears in a bar in town, and the game adds additional characters to flesh out the story. Peter Quince from A Midsummer Night's Dream appears instead of the troupe of performers that are in Hamlet, and he is one of the few characters who is aware of Ophelia's time loop.

Team lead and writer Katie Chironis and game designer Connor Fallon originally met in Carnegie Mellon's Game Creation Society.[3] Development of Elsinore began in 2010.[3] Chironis and Fallon originally created Elsinore as part of a game jam, scrapped the project entirely, and then decided to create it from the ground up again.[3] Chironis was inspired to make a Hamlet game from both her high school Shakespeare teacher and from the college writing classes she took at Carnegie Mellon.[3] Chironis and Fallon wanted to create a game that would have a tragic story but in an interactive medium, eschewing the "power fantasy" games that are commonly created.[4] By combining the tragedy of Hamlet with the goal of "winning" games, the development team thought they could have a fresh take on Hamlet.[5]

Chironis and Fallon created their company, Golden Glitch, with five other founders that had been part of the Game Creation Society, and worked on the project during nights and weekends while keeping their day jobs— the founders received no profits until after the game went on sale.[3] The team's four contractors were paid from their personal salaries from their other jobs.[3] In 2015, Golden Glitch created a Kickstarter for Elsinore, which was successfully funded and reached over $32,000 raised.[6] Despite an original targeted release date of 2015, the game was eventually released in 2019 instead.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask provided inspiration for how to implement time loops in the game, and Golden Glitch drew inspiration from anime and visual novels which had many examples of time loops as a plot mechanic.[3][7] Golden Glitch decided to focus on Ophelia as the protagonist because of her lack of agency in Hamlet.[3][7] Her early exit by suicide in the play means that she is uninvolved in much of the action that comes later on, and it allowed the development team to make her to be a stronger character.[3] The team also decided to make Opheila a woman of color, and created her with the idea that she was of Moorish descent through her mother's line.[8] This modification and some others allowed the writers to ensure that all of the characters had more fleshed out and unique storylines.[3]

Elsinore received mostly positive reception from critics, who praised the game's take on Hamlet but were frustrated by the time some of the game's somewhat slower pace and long waiting periods.[2][10]

Praise for the game was centered especially on the writing, and the mostly perceived success of adapting Hamlet towards a video game medium. Wired's Julie Muncy praised Elsinore for its "beautiful writing" and "humanistic flourishes".[1] The Los Angeles Times's Todd Martens commented positively on the game's parallels with modern experiences.[12] Polygon's Cass Marshall compared the game positively to Long Live the Queen, but noted that unlike in that game, Elsinore's mechanics meant that progress always felt positive, praising the deep levels of character that can be explored.[13] GameSpot's Phil Hornshaw listed the game in GameSpot's "Best of 2019: Editor's Spotlight Awards" and praised the game for being full of "well-executed ideas".[14]

Criticism for the game's long waiting periods was tempered by feelings on the overall game. Kotaku's Heather Alexandra noted that the slow pace "wouldn't be for everyone" but felt that if players could make it through it, the game was a worthwhile experience.[15] US Gamer's Eric Van Allen noted that the waiting periods can "grate" after a while, but that the game was largely successful in creating a positive narrative experience.[10]

• Official website