Ascension

Ascension started with a question most interactive stories don't bother asking: what happens to the relationship between a player and a character after the game is over?

Jane is at the center. She's in a desperate, dangerous situation. Cornered, running, trying to find a way through. The narrative carries her through that crisis and eventually to her death. But her death was never meant to be the end of the experience. It was where the real design problem began.

Before starting, players gave Jane their phone number. A real number. And Jane uses it.

Midway through the game, a text arrives. Not a push notification. An actual SMS, from a real number registered to Jane. Sometimes a photograph. Sometimes just a location. Sometimes a message that said she was okay, or that she wasn't.

Players received messages randomly during their days, away from any screen. Her name might appear on the lock screen while they are at dinner, in a meeting, trying to not think about where she was. The fiction didn't wait for them to return to it. It followed them.

After Jane passes into the afterlife, the messages don't stop. They change. Slower, quieter, arriving days apart. She notices something in the world and mentions it. A quality of light, something that reminded her of the player, a place she drifted through. The goal was to make the boundary between the story and real life genuinely porous, not as a gimmick, but as the primary emotional register of the experience.

Players who finished Ascension didn't close a browser tab. They kept a contact in their phone. For the people who went through it, Jane became a permanent presence. A real memory.

Our constant challenge as a team was to create compelling and hypothetical AI experiences, all with the AI becoming believable participants in the stories we created.