Zelle

released on Oct 04, 2019

Zelle is a occult adventure game. You can explore the inside and outside of the castle using adventure game mechanics and battle demons with strategic mouse clicks. Your goal in this game is to bring the protagonist home.


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This review contains spoilers

|Non-Spoiler Section|

Zelle is a very... interesting game. It doesn't define itself as a horror experience, instead choosing the term "occult adventure", which is much more generous. However, it does try to create a rather tense atmosphere throughout it's runtime.

This atmosphere never really hit me in the way I had hoped it would. The "scares" were all rather predictable, and though the art is very well done, nothing shown gave me any sense of dread for the situation our protagonist is in. This could just be due to me being intimately antiquated with the horror genre, but I was never shaken by the games' events. I find that games need to give you something within the plot that feels unnatural and tense to achieve the vibe Zelle was going for. However, the premise of "boy goes outside room when he's not supposed to and meets demons" wasn't nearly enough to get me invested.

While the game tries to make some commentaries on sin, heaven, and hell, all it's observations remain surface level, and never dig down to the core of the discussion. Perhaps with a longer runtime this issue could have been mended, but I feel that a longer runtime would also sacrifice player attention-span, with the barebones mechanics of the gameplay not leaving much room to be expanded upon. I wish the gameplay was entirely reworked from what it is, as the shortcomings from this game's tiny length don't end at it's inability to make any greater points.

A major intention of the second half of the game is to try and get you invested in the characters of the world, but again, with such a short runtime it's VERY hard to give any of the characters meaningful dimensions, leading me to not care about what happened to any of them, even our own protagonist. The shift from first to third person that also occurs in the second half is an interesting gimmick, but does absolutely nothing to enhance or change the player experience. The developers seemed to add this feature only so that they could insert short "cutscenes", but with this being made in the RPGMaker engine, all the cutscenes were extremely stiff, and the lack of connection between the player and the characters means I didn't care much for what was occuring in the first place.

|Spoilers|

The boss fight with the reaper (I forget what his real name was because I did not care about him) was the only time in the game the gameplay actually felt slightly tense. However, this tension is INSTANTLY brought down by the fact that directly after, you fight the final boss, which you win with, you guessed it, the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP!!!!........ Without any explanation or reasoning, a little dragon baby turns into a big dragon and finishes off the final boss for you! Yay!?!? This could have MAYBE been a cool moment if it was explained a little??? But even then, AGAIN, it is SO hard to feel any emotion towards any of these characters when they are so two-dimensional and underdeveloped, so a character-driven finale felt EXTREMELY underwhelming.

As someone with a deep love for RPGMaker games (My #1 game on here is one), I really, REALLY wanted to like this game. It has such a unique vibe, but unfortunately that gets ruined by the shift that occurs in the second half, and it never really recovers or expands upon itself in a way that makes the experience memorable. I wouldn't NOT reccomend the game necissarily, as it's runtime doesn't make it a major timesink to be lost, but I would advise expectations to not be too high while playing, and to simply view this as someone's short-and-sweet art project.

You know I gotta love a game that makes me genuinely piss my pants and also laugh really hard. Just incredibly unique in every aspect and beautifully executed all the same.

وحدة من افضل الالعاب يلي لعبتها اللعبة عبارة عن مزيج من اللالغاز السهلة والرعب وقصة اللعبة جدا جميلة والشخصيات وحواراتها مؤثرة ولها روح وكمية الغرابة يلي تحطك فيها اللعبة تخليها لعبة فريدة جدا من نوعها

This is so charming and interesting in so many ways

a very whimsical horror adventure

Short little game about ghosts navigating through afterlife and sin and that whole mess.

I think one of the most fascinating aspects is how the mechanics of the afterlife emotionally impact all parties involve. Reapers grab souls, goddesses judge whether you're meant for heaven or hell, sin twists up lost angry souls, etc etc. The characterization of the main reaper Zogzo is bizarrely endearing. His job is only to slice up souls and send them packing. But he cares too much, trapping souls in his private castle to try and rehabilitate them before their proper judgment. He quite sincerely wants to do good. But he's limited by his own nature as a Reaper and his own perspective. Near the 2/3rds point of the game, you can obey his final warning and attempt to return to the castle. He's sighing in relief just before he's realized he's already attacked the protagonist. He can only gasp in horror that the instincts he's been fighting the entire game betrays him at such a key emotional moment. It works primarily because his sincerity is so debatable throughout the game. That moment of vulnerability, genuine self-disgust, is just so endearing as a character.

The goddess, by comparison, is sympathetic enough to the plight of humans, but its limited by her own perspective. She can't grasp the idea that Zogzo has good intent by leaving souls hanging around the mortal realm. Judging souls is her job and delaying it is just gunking up her system. Zogzo can delay the issue all he wants, she's not gonna count his rehabilitation sessions for shit. And her alliance with the protagonist is largely to further her own holy perspective on fighting demons. She can't actually think about the actual material conditions of humanity cause that's just not in her view of anything. Its these little nuances that avoid the expected "demons = good, angels = good" twist and center a horrible system as an existence for these creatures.

Gameplay broadly involves running from location to location with your latest items to unlock new doors, but it functions well. Minigame battles connecting all the pieces together, encouraging broad challenges. Its challenging enough without being insurmountable.

My favorite part of the game might be just how much of the game is just not interested in getting into gritty edgy content re: sin and violence. Its just not interested in that. Demons and angels are real, but also so are cute little dragons. Goofy things exist in tandem with the violent. Its not trying to be deeper than that and that's the kind of ping-pong in tone I like to see.