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.
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.