Welcome to Elk Demo

Played on: Mac, via Steam

An engaging storyline and memorable characters liven up this short demo

Colouring-book

Welcome to Elk has a distinctive colouring-book style with bold line drawings, shades of grey, and colour fills to denote items of interest. It works functionally very well, looks great, and also fits the jovial nature of at least the game’s introduction.

Darker

Things do turn a bit darker — or at least quirkier — later on in the demo, and this certainly makes for an intriguing plotline. The game is very narrative-driven, if this demo is anything to go by. I’m expecting the full game to feature quite a few more mini-games, but it looks like there will be plenty of twists and turns in the story to keep things interesting anyway.

Characters

The characters are an eclectic mix, and even in this short demo, elements of their personalities shine through. Their stories may only be hinted at, but I’m left wanting to explore them in further detail.

Mini-games

There’s just the one which is essentially a case of mimicking keyboard cursor presses by diagram — except the diagrams can be rotated. But the fun part comes in the hilarious contortions the characters adopt, and the dialog between them. I couldn’t be certain whether failure actually punishes the player — it would be a challenge for the mini-games to remain compelling enough if that weren’t the case.

Gameplay

I’m not sure how linear it is, nor how much exploration is a part of the final game. If different paths are available, I’d hope there is a way to navigate them on repeat playthroughs because skipping through the dialog you’ve already read is a bit tiresome.

Overall, this is a fascinating game with an exciting depth to it. Many of the elements have me wanting more and Welcome to Elk looks and sounds great. I hope the full game lives up to this promise!

Welcome to Elk is being developed by the folk at Triple Topping and is scheduled for realease in 2020.