Amazing game that feels all too familiar- feels like its documenting the lore of your local town and its troubled residents. really cool meta gameplay. want to replay soon.
This game looks terrible but it’s a great story. Trust me. Fun little minigames. The most shocking minigame I’ve ever experienced. Most if not all of its stories are rooted in an actual town's stories. They play a live interview each time you find a new message in a bottle.
Juego muy extraño y raro. Tiene diálogos y escenas muy buenas, pero no me he enterado de mucho.
It’s not often I come across a game I feel the urge to replay immediately after finishing it, but that’s exactly what happenned to me with Welcome to Elk. It has a captivating aura that makes you want to be part of its special place and then spread the word about it, and I think that is exactly what its creators intended.
Without giving away too much (I think it’s best to approach WtE knowing as little as possible about it), this is a game about storytelling in which different real-life stories are gathered and unified to be told through the fictionalization of the village of Elk.
During our playthrough, Frigg (the main character) will receive messages in a bottle containing texts that are always related in some way to the events of the game. What’s special about those bottled texts is that they are actually telling us the true events that inspired the project, events we have been playing up until then adapted into the gameplay’s context. They are messages for Frigg, who is in turn acting as the direct link between game and player by handling those stories to us using the videogame as the media. The creators even go as far as to include some personal stories of their own, but I won’t be spoiling that content in this review.
Since conversations are the core feature of the game, it is worth noting that the writing used in the dialogues has a really good execution. The characters speak in a very informal and natural manner and each one of them have their own personal way of talking that expresses their personality through a very carefully designed selection of words and idioms. They have very expressive facial animations, too, which make them more relatable as well.
Gameplay-wise this is a simple and humble game, but with a remarkable amount of different minigames, each one with its own set of rules and controls and with a high level of polish; they usually have a touch of absurdity that adds originality and freshness to those little moments, and some of them are really emotional and are conceived to leave an imprint on the player through their mechanics, which they achieve with a surprising amount of rawness that reminds us that we haven’t arrived at Elk just to have fun.
Regarding other key aspects, the visual style has a very interesting approach that leaves the background environments in a secondary position by not coloring them, and saves the colours for the most important elements (mostly characters). That way, the scenery serves as the symbolic canvas in which all the different stories are displayed to us. Also, since we will spend quite some time wandering through the isle of Elk, the creators put a lot of effort in the characters’ movement by making it very smooth and pleasant, with a really charming and distinctive animation style. The game’s atmosphere is completed by a soundtrack that’s heavily influenced by danish folk and creates a comfy and cozy setting to play in.
In the end, the core essence of Welcome to Elk is to express the will of its creators to turn the game into a story-spreading device conveniently built around the town’s bar, meeting point of oral transmission where words flow like the beer that gives life to the people of the village.
See you in the second afterlife.
Without giving away too much (I think it’s best to approach WtE knowing as little as possible about it), this is a game about storytelling in which different real-life stories are gathered and unified to be told through the fictionalization of the village of Elk.
During our playthrough, Frigg (the main character) will receive messages in a bottle containing texts that are always related in some way to the events of the game. What’s special about those bottled texts is that they are actually telling us the true events that inspired the project, events we have been playing up until then adapted into the gameplay’s context. They are messages for Frigg, who is in turn acting as the direct link between game and player by handling those stories to us using the videogame as the media. The creators even go as far as to include some personal stories of their own, but I won’t be spoiling that content in this review.
Since conversations are the core feature of the game, it is worth noting that the writing used in the dialogues has a really good execution. The characters speak in a very informal and natural manner and each one of them have their own personal way of talking that expresses their personality through a very carefully designed selection of words and idioms. They have very expressive facial animations, too, which make them more relatable as well.
Gameplay-wise this is a simple and humble game, but with a remarkable amount of different minigames, each one with its own set of rules and controls and with a high level of polish; they usually have a touch of absurdity that adds originality and freshness to those little moments, and some of them are really emotional and are conceived to leave an imprint on the player through their mechanics, which they achieve with a surprising amount of rawness that reminds us that we haven’t arrived at Elk just to have fun.
Regarding other key aspects, the visual style has a very interesting approach that leaves the background environments in a secondary position by not coloring them, and saves the colours for the most important elements (mostly characters). That way, the scenery serves as the symbolic canvas in which all the different stories are displayed to us. Also, since we will spend quite some time wandering through the isle of Elk, the creators put a lot of effort in the characters’ movement by making it very smooth and pleasant, with a really charming and distinctive animation style. The game’s atmosphere is completed by a soundtrack that’s heavily influenced by danish folk and creates a comfy and cozy setting to play in.
In the end, the core essence of Welcome to Elk is to express the will of its creators to turn the game into a story-spreading device conveniently built around the town’s bar, meeting point of oral transmission where words flow like the beer that gives life to the people of the village.
See you in the second afterlife.