Project:Elyita

Starting State

 

A middle-aged corporate worker who believes Prima is a dangerous, savage planet and resents his wife for what he believes happened to his family.

 

Narrative Pressure

Then briefly explain the kinds of discoveries he encounters throughout the game.

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The Arc

Resentment → Discovery → Doubt → Empathy → Reconciliation
 

Excerpt: "The Father is a middle aged man working in a dead end corporate job to provide for his son. His wife has been exiled to Prima, however he thinks she is dead. Filled with resentment, and anger, the father has taken a role of the single caretaker for his son. He believes in Nexa-Arc’s narrative about Prima being a savage planet, and tries to make sure his son doesn’t learn much about it so he doesn’t suffer the same fate as his wife. He alone holds the family together."

Player agency in Elyita is centred around exploration and discovery rather than branching endings.

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The player is given freedom over how they approach the world, which regions they explore first, which optional stories they pursue, and how deeply they engage with the cultures they encounter. The main narrative remains cohesive, while optional exploration allows players to build a more complete understanding of Elyita at their own pace.

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Choosing the Journey

“The four areas are accessible from the beginning, allowing players to choose which challenges they want to tackle first.”

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Rather than requiring the player to follow a fixed regional order, Elyita allows them to decide where they want to explore first. This gives players control over the pace at which they encounter the world's different environments, cultures, and conflicts.

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Optional Content

"Side quests can provide extra information, dialogue, and language learning, but do not change the overall ending of the story."

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Side content is designed to reward curiosity rather than function solely as optional combat or collectible content. Players who choose to spend more time with the inhabitants of Elyita can uncover additional information about the world and gradually understand its language.

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At the beginning, the language is unreadable.

"The player will not understand the language at the beginning of the game, but as they interact with NPCs and complete quests, they will learn the language."

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The intention was to make the player experience the same communication barrier as the protagonist. Instead of presenting the fictional language as translated text from the beginning, the game initially asks the player to encounter it without fully understanding it.

 

A Language That Belongs to the World​

“The written language uses symbols to represent words or ideas, rather than letters.”​

 

The language wasn't designed solely as a puzzle for the player. It was also intended to reinforce Elyita as a distinct culture with its own written and spoken communication.

 

Design Goal

I wanted communication to feel like something the player discovers rather than information the game simply gives them.

 

By initially withholding translations and gradually revealing meaning through interaction, the language system supports the game's broader themes of exploration, trust, and understanding. The player isn't only learning about Elyita's people through exposition - they are learning how to communicate with them.
 

Elyita combines a personal father-son story with a larger conflict between nature and industrialization. Although the world contains environmental destruction, conflict, and loss, the story is ultimately hopeful.

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Rather than focusing solely on defeating an external enemy, the narrative explores what it means to let go of the past, repair damaged relationships, and allow something to grow despite the circumstances surrounding it.

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Nature vs Machines

“The nature aspect is also meant to show that nature can adapt and thrive even in the harshest of environments.”

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Nature in Elyita isn't portrayed as something fragile that must simply be protected. It is also resilient. Even when damaged by industrialization, life continues to adapt, survive, and find ways to grow.

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Father & Son

“The main themes of this game are nature vs the machines, but also a personal father-son story.”

 

The Personal Story Beneath the Larger Conflict

The environmental conflict provides the larger setting, but the emotional core of the game is the relationship between the Father and his son.

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“His goal is just to find his son and get him back, however, with it, the goal is to nurture the relationship, and to let go of the past that has been holding the Father hostage and tearing his family apart.”

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Forgiveness Without Erasing Harm

“The point isn’t to say that the Mother did the right thing, and the Father needs to just accept it, but to find a middle ground and understand each other.”

 

One of the story's goals is to avoid presenting forgiveness as simply deciding that someone's actions were acceptable. Instead, the characters have to confront the past, understand one another's perspectives, and decide how they want to move forward.

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Hope

“The story is meant to be hopeful, even though it deals with some dark themes.”

 

The story doesn't suggest that every problem can be solved or that the damage done to Elyita can simply be undone. Instead, hope comes from the characters choosing to make small changes, repair what they can, and create space for something better to grow.

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Tone

Melancholic · Mysterious · Wonder-Filled · Hopeful

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The tone moves between the weight of the world's problems and the sense of wonder that comes from discovering a world that is still capable of growth.

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The Premise

"When a young man disappears while searching for answers about his missing mother, his father is forced to leave behind the corporate world he knows and travel to the mysterious planet where she was exiled. As he searches for his son, he begins uncovering the truth behind the relationship between the two worlds — and the environmental destruction threatening the planet's survival."​

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A Story About What We Believe

"He believes in Nexa-Arc’s narrative about Prima being a savage planet, and tries to make sure his son doesn’t learn much about it so he doesn’t suffer the same fate as his wife."

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The Father's journey is therefore not simply a search for his son. It is also a gradual confrontation with the beliefs he has built his life around. As he travels through Elyita, he encounters evidence that challenges his understanding of the planet, his family, and Nexa-Arc's relationship with Elyita.

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Two Perspectives

"The Son has grown up without knowing what happened to his mother. While the Father has tried to protect him from the past, the Son instead begins investigating it himself. The Father refuses to talk about her, so the son has to dig into the matter himself. His search eventually leads him toward evidence that the relationship between Prima and Nexa-Arc is not what he has been told."​

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No Easy Villain

The story does not treat the family's conflict as a simple question of who was right and who was wrong.

"The point isn’t to say that the Mother did the right thing, and the Father needs to just accept it, but to find a middle ground and understand each other."

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Two Stories, One Journey

Nature vs. Machines

Elyita is being damaged by Nexa-Arc's industrial activity. The Father's journey gradually exposes the scale of that destruction and the consequences it has had on the planet and its inhabitants.

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Father & Son

Beneath the larger conflict is a much more personal story about a fractured family trying to understand one another and move beyond the past.

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"His goal is just to find his son and get him back, however, with it, the goal is to nurture the relationship, and to let go of the past that has been holding the Father hostage and tearing his family apart."

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Tone: Hope

"A flower trying to grow through pavement."

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Although Elyita deals with environmental destruction, family resentment, and a planet struggling to survive, the story is ultimately hopeful. Its goal isn't to suggest that one person can solve an enormous systemic problem. Instead, the characters make small changes, repair what they can, and create enough time for Elyita to continue fighting for itself.

Elyita's environmental storytelling is designed around the idea that the player should not simply be told that the planet is being damaged - they should experience the consequences of that damage while exploring it.

 

Each region's environmental crisis influences its landscape, traversal, hazards, and gameplay. This allows the game's central nature-versus-machines theme to exist within the player's moment-to-moment experience rather than only through dialogue or exposition.

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Earth: Deforestation

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The Problem

Deforestation

The Earth region has been heavily damaged by industrial deforestation. Rather than presenting this only through visual decoration, the destruction affects how the player navigates the environment.

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How the player experiences it

Excerpt: 

“The environmental challenges of this area include spikes, lots of unstable ground [...] lots of holes, and breakable walls.”

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Ground Shakes:

At certain points, the environment itself becomes unstable. The screen shakes as the region's deforestation machine disrupts the player's intended path, forcing them to adapt and find another route.

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Air: Pollution

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The Problem

Air Pollution

The Air region is affected by pollution that moves through its wind currents. Because the region is built around floating islands and open skies, there are few places where the player can remain safely stationary.

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How the player experiences it

Pollution becomes part of the region's traversal challenge. Wind patterns and polluted drafts force the player to anticipate movement and choose when and where to move.

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Excerpt: 

“The player will have to learn to predict patterns of these drafts to avoid them.”

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The Fog:

Fog can also slow the player down, creating another environmental hazard. Utility spells can be used to clear it, allowing the player's abilities to interact with the environmental problem rather than simply avoiding it.

Elyita was designed as a world where the environment, cultures, history, and inhabitants are interconnected. Rather than creating locations as backdrops for the story, I wanted each region to have its own identity, traditions, visual language, and relationship with the world around it.

The following is a selection from the Earth region, demonstrating how I approached culture, history, architecture, belief systems, and everyday details when developing Elyita.

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Earth : Culture

“Earth is heavily focused on nature and the culture of the people who live there. They have a deep connection to the natural world and believe that everything around them has a spirit.”

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A Culture Built Around Nature

“Earth people believe that everything has a spirit, and that the spirits of their ancestors live within the trees and plants around them.”

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This belief system influences how the people of Earth interact with their environment. Nature isn't simply a resource or setting; it is connected to ancestry, identity, and spirituality.

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​Traditions

When an Earth child reaches adulthood, they receive a seed representing the path they will take in life. The child chooses where to plant it, and the resulting tree grows alongside them.

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“When children come of age, they are given a seed that represents the path they will take in life. The seed is planted in a place chosen by the child, and as they grow, the tree grows with them.”

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Worldbuilding purpose:
This tradition reinforces the culture's relationship with nature while giving the setting a way to express concepts of identity, adulthood, and personal growth through the environment.

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Architecture

"Architecture in Earth is designed to blend into nature, rather than dominate it. Buildings are often built into the sides of trees, or constructed from natural materials like wood and stone.”

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Architecture became another way of communicating the culture's values. The people aren't simply surrounded by forests; their settlements are designed around the belief that they are part of that environment.

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History

“The people of Earth have a long history of living in harmony with nature, but this has been threatened by the arrival of the machines. The machines have destroyed many of their forests and disrupted their way of life. The people of Earth have a long history of living in harmony with nature, but this has been threatened by the arrival of the machines.”

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The region's present-day conflict is therefore rooted in its history. The arrival of Nexa-Arc's machines isn't an isolated threat - it disrupts a way of life that has developed over generations.

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The Arc

History → Culture → Present Conflict

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Creatures and Ecology

The region's ecology was also designed around its environment, with plant-based creatures and wildlife reinforcing the identity of the forest.

Forest sprites
Treefolk
Giant mushrooms
Carnivorous plants
Wolves
Bears
Boars
Deer
Birds
Insects
Other forest creatures

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​The Rootbreaker  

“A giant machine built to destroy forests. It was originally designed to clear land for settlements, but it has continued to operate long after its purpose was fulfilled.”

 

History Embedded in a Creature

“It was originally designed to clear land for settlements, but it has continued to operate long after its purpose was fulfilled.”

 

The Rootbreaker isn't simply an enemy placed in the forest. Its existence tells the player something about the history of Nexa-Arc's relationship with Elyita: machines built for a specific purpose have continued causing damage long after that purpose has disappeared.

 

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