Look Both Ways

Look Both Ways is a horror and mystery-based visual novel and puzzle game which tackles grief, acceptance, and the struggles queer people face in areas they might not be wanted. It combines puzzles, branching dialogue paths, and detective gameplay all in a visual-novel format, giving the player an in-game week to solve what the game assures you is a murder in whatever way you see fit. Set in the fictional Appalachian town of Pine Bluffs, Ohio, the game explores the titular character’s grief, prejudice and social pressures against queer people in smaller conservative towns, and the consequences of leaving them both ignored.

You play as Em, a trangender 22 year old student at Saint Raymond University, a college tucked away in the small rural town of Pine Bluffs, Ohio. It’s been two weeks since your best friend was found dead on the train tracks at the edge of town, and people are calling it an accident- however, you know better, and his ghost has requested that you solve the crime. You’ve managed to keep the case open for another week, and you have that much time to solve it. Interview the townsfolk, choose a suspect, collect evidence- all with the help of a manifestation of your friend’s ghost- and try to piece together what actually happened the night Marley Benbrook was killed.

Look Both Ways was my two semester BFA Thesis Project at the Cleveland Institute of Art, a project I chose due to its style being more outside my comfort zone and because a major focus of it is on storytelling through character design. We had to present six deliverables by the end of each semester, and this is a cumulation of the work I did for each one- although the end project was not to make a playable game, the assets and designs are meant to convey the story to the reader without having to play one to understand them.

Characters and Character References

Emery Shepherd

Louella Maclean

Gretchen Anderson

Lincoln Shepherd

Marley Benbrook

EJ Delaney

Lawrence Cargolle

Each character plays a specific role in the story, as each character is a suspect- my goal with the cast was to create a group of characters who, while interesting and sometimes likable to the player, would all have their reason, whether they were reasonable or not, for killing Marley. The suspects are ranked from highest suspicion level to lowest, marked by their “suspect status.”