You play as Ophelia, a young noblewoman in the world of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Quickly you realize you're trapped in a time-loop. It's up to you to sneak, gossip, and uncover the secrets around Elsinore castle.

I normally do not enjoy time travel/loops in stories, but Elsinore did it well. It was engaging and fun to discover what you can change in the environment. How will person X respond to this information you found out? Or what does person Y do around this time of day? There are many dialogue options to find and question with a large cast. There are 11 different fates you can discover making this highly re-playable.

Honestly, a wonderful well-written adventure game. I love how it ultimately lets you choose Ophelia's fate.

Initially captivating in its expressive possibilities, Elsinore stumbles in its second act by spinning off into a time loop metatext that neither interrogates the themes of Hamlet nor the non-linear detective systems in meaningful ways. The first dozen or so loops are riveting in their constant diversions, new wrinkles in the mechanics revealing themselves along with alternate paths through a familiar work, but once the larger structure takes form it's clear Elsinore is actually a fairly ordinary time loop mystery using the cast of Hamlet as props more than easily recognizable characters (and then there's still half a game to get through).

The insertion of explicit conversations about identity politics stand out as rather silly in their naivety, positioning Hamlet and Ophelia as #allies while having no bearing on the rest of the atomized character interactions. It was quite disappointing to discover just how little this game is interested in exploring Hamlet the text, taking its basic plot structure along with so many liberties that centuries of interpretations are washed away in favor of fanfic queries like "what if Ophelia was a gay pirate?" It's fine in a sense that all adaptations are works of translation and revisionism, but this is so invested in capital-H Hamlet that I wanted and expected something more substantial.

A lot of fun to poke around with despite its second act disappointments. I'd love to see this format applied to other plays, considering I'll likely never get to see Sleep No More and this is the next best thing.

Content warnings: suicide, confinement, dismemberment, torture, death by fire

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

Expected a mystery point and click adventure game. Soon realized it was a timeloop game. Gameplay consists on attending events to obtain information, conveying said information to other characters to create more events to witness and learn more. Manipulate characte's behaviours in order to obtain the outcome wanted. Plenty of posibilities. Multiple endings. Reached what seemed to be an objectively perfect happy ending, but it was a fakeout. Very cool reveal. End consists of choosing one of the imperfect endings (what each person considers the least bad varies wildly) I chose to live in an unreal fantasy where everyone is happy. Going back into the game would imply purging this ending forever, so I stuck with my choice. Saw all other endings in youtube. Getting the ending where you detach from your emotions and kill everyone leads to direct connection with Outer Wilds' Dark Bramble. Fun easter egg, satisfying to notice.

Overall, had fun finding the ways to make the thing I wanted to happen to happen. Characters were good. Conceot and execution were cool, but I personally would have preferred a more "by the books" beat bad guy and get happy ending.

CWs for Elsinore: Drowning, knives, body horror, torture, dismemberment.

A very exciting attempt at Shakespearean gaming that makes a bold pitch without too much substance behind it. Managing the time loop and all the disparate leads rocks for the front half of the game. Elsinore Castle has a strong sense of place and all of the characters are just rendered enough to both capture the play and suggest a larger thought about Hamlet. The game however breaks away from the original text a little too strongly and suddenly and reads a lot more like fanfiction without critical reasoning for the alterations made. Some of these alternate threads are really exciting, but the ones which are weighted as end states are too dull and head-nodding, punching back their chance to shine to instead hand you a list of monologues to pick from before credits The in your face Umineko references are frankly a little ridiculous when this game ends up demonstrating nothing about how WTC handles the gravity of time loops because I was definitely not playing with the intention of "saving" Ophelia at any point. Elsinore is a fun adventure-like Hamlet dollhouse to pick at for its opening hours or so, but if you're looking for careful thoughts on the original play or a tightly composed time loop narrative, you're not going to find it here.

I found Elsinore interesting. Very much gripping at times. Its twists and turns are exciting. The journey to getting to some exciting parts can be a bit of a slog, but it does make you feel that you really have to work to get your happy ending.

I liked it! I enjoyed the discussions it put forth. I recommend it!

(full review https://doorplays.substack.com/p/door-reviews-elsinore-2019)

All 13 endings reached, including the 2 secret endings. In many ways, Elsinore is incredible, weaving an intelligently-told time-looping story around the setting of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The game sees the player taking control of Ophelia, who, after being killed within a couple of days, find herself waking up again into an ever-repeating loop, doomed to die repeatedly in some manner within at most four days. The task, then, is to explore Elsinore castle from an overhead perspective, interacting with its various inhabitants (via a point-and-click interface) in the hopes of working out what is causing the loop and, eventually, how to break it.

It's an engrossing premise, told with superb writing throughout and the level of detail and nuance available in the character interactions, alongside the huge range of permutations of events, is a highly laudable achievement. There's the occasional nod to actual Shakespearian dialog that's enjoyable to spot, but not overused and the game is perfectly accessible to someone with no knowledge of the source material. Of course, Hamlet is a tragedy, so don't expect happy endings to be in abundance!

It must be said that some extent of repetition is pretty much inherent in the time-loop premise, which can become a bit frustrating when exploring events that take place later in a cycle. A fast-forward control alleviates this to some extent, but a way to accelerate the text-based dialog further would have been appreciated. Just occasionally, the event logic breaks a little - so you might encounter, for example, references to a character who's just died as if they're still alive - but this is rare and honestly, with the complexity that's involved here, this is forgivable. These relatively minor shortcomings aside, Elsinore is among the strongest examples of a timeloop-based game that you could hope to find.