2.5/5 ★ – clunkymechanics's review of Elli.

Completed: December 20 2020 Time to beat: 6 Hours Platform: Nintendo Switch Elli is a third person puzzle platformer that I picked up for $5 on the Switch store, knowing nothing about it other than being attracted to its rather simplistic cover art. To be honest, I will play pretty much anything that is in the vein of Elli's general art style, there is just something about pastels with cute little critters I can't turn down. Elli is not without its issues but it is a really great feat for first time developers and self published studio Bandana Kid. Elli doesn't do anything you haven't seen in a platformer before, but it's unique art style and fun atmosphere kept me interested for the entirety of its 5 hours of gameplay. I found the difficulty rather evenly paced, I am not the best platformer in the world so there were certainly segments I struggled with but overall found the game to be a satisfying level of challenge. There were some aspects of the platforming I found unfair, which is largely attributed to a lack of polish on the overall game. The fatal fall damage felt extremely inconsistent at times, which is especially frustrating with a platformer. There were quite a few areas where I made jumps to platforms that felt within my reach, but upon touching the platform Elli instantly died as if I fell from an unreasonable height. This element wore on me and affected my ability to enjoy the game overall, however when this wasn't the case the platforming felt tight and in control. The narrative of Elli felt quite confusing and disjointed. I was not too bothered by this as the dialogue was short and easily ignorable, however it is always a disappointment to me when games try to tell a story that is more complex than they have time for an end up failing to convey anything due to that. There were lots of components to the narrative I felt were unnecessary, and wish they would have stuck to the primary narrative with no added fluff. There were a cast of characters who were easily forgettable, and I feel they would have benefitted from narrowing their scope and focusing on flushing out the protagonist Elli and antagonist Ghasti before diving into other characters. Overall I enjoyed Elli, but feel like there were a lot of ambitions that held it back.