Elephantasy: Flipside

Whatever the hook is in this game, it did not reveal itself in the 30 minutes I played. My experience went as follows: - Explored some nice isometric pixel art scenes - Was given no clear objective other than "explore" - Did some platforming that was challenging mostly because the perspective is confusing, or because messing up a single time makes you reset a long distance - Encountered no puzzles that I could actually solve because presumably I need a specific item - Turned on some features that may or may not have been cheat codes? - Was presented with several collectibles that gave me a button prompt that did not work - Found absolutely zero items that actually gave me new abilities, all I ever did the whole game was run and jump I wanted to keep playing to see if the game would give me something more interesting to do, but my patience ran out when I encountered an enemy that would steal the few items I managed to get. This is not the game for me.

There's nothing I've played quite like this game, including the first Elephantasy. The items here are unique and allow for each player to solve puzzles in their own way, bringing to mind the open-ended puzzle design of Breath of the Wild. Gradually discovering the hidden depths of your tools and their combinations is very satisfying; some of the things this game lets you do feel like cheating. The world is exceptionally well-designed and I felt clever whenever I made progress after being stumped for a while. Many of the points brought up in the negative reviews here are entirely fair - the isometric platforming sections are often unreadable, the final boss sucks, fast travel taking up an item slot is annoying, and I'm not a fan of how it's possible to lock yourself out of content by spending resources wrong - but at the end of the day if I'm going to give a game a negative review because of some irritating design choices, it's usually because there are any number of other games I'd recommend someone spend their valuable time on instead. What would I recommend someone play in place of Elephantasy: Flipside? Nothing comes to mind. There are no comparable experiences out there.

I sort of like that the game tells you nothing and you get to go out and explore. In many places the map could be better though. I also dislike the item system that the game shares with the previous Elephantasy title, where you can carry whichever item you want but only a few at a time. The game bombards you with like 10 different items/abilities you can 'borrow', whereas I prefer to find them one by one in a more typical metroidvania style. Instead of this, what you find are 'extra slots' to carry more of these items at a time. I guess it's just a different way of doing things, but having access to all of these abilities from the start sucks some of the fun out of it for me. Platforming can be tricky in multiple locations due to the isometric view. It's sometimes impossible to tell where the platforms are exactly. There were times where I needed to jump up many screens of platforms, but it was impossible to discern exactly where these platforms were. Causing you to think it's in one place, to miss your jump and fall all the way down to the bottom again. A problem that appears to be no fault of your own (trial and error). I experienced a similar issue with determining where platforms were in another isometric game called [b]Oolo[/b], but I could at least rotate the camera a bit in that which helped a tiny bit. Exploration in [b]Flipside[/b] reminds me a bit of Kings Quest 1-4, in that you have many screens you can visit in the world and need to find the items and backtrack a lot. I do like games like this (I loved [b]Oolo[/b]), but here with this item system it feels far more directionless.

Oh my god, Super Mario RPG is one of my favourite games ever and I haven't played a game that scratched the same spot it did since. Elephantasy is damn good. The music is charming, the visuals are deeply satisfying, the map is intricate and rewards exploration. It has so much going on for it and I could not put it down when I started. That being said, [b]The game is also hard as ####[/b]. There's times where it felt like Celeste—you have infinite lives for each room, and each room is 7x7 (how hard can it be really?). Some of the rooms are super technical, requiring wall-jumps, temporary item boosts and precise timing to overcome. Getting 100% is a chore... and does actually require what I consider to be "abuse" of its own gimmicks, but its not the worst because the game does have cheat codes! A lot of the frustration that may come from its retro-esque challenge is mitigated if you play the game with the game manual open. Indeed, this game comes with a super cute manual and you SHOULD use it while playing (its on the store page). The manual makes the game kinda feel like Tunic too! It tells you what all the items do, how they get better when upgraded and has a map to aid with familiarizing yourself with the world! Really adds to the experience in a nostalgic way. Now would I recommend this game to everyone... no... but if you like any of the games I mentioned in this review, you gotta give it an honest try, its really good.

There's a lot to like here but I generally feel like the game doesn't really want me to enjoy it at any sort of reasonable pace. Powerups are unique and multi-faceted, and their features overlap in ways that makes exploration over the same terrain feel varied, but even with that you'll still end up walking the same paths over and over *way* too often. I feel like I'm constantly rummaging around for scraps of new rooms/collectibles, then I'll find some and have fun for a few minutes, then I'm back to rummaging. The premise of increasing your inventory size to be able to solve more complex puzzles or traverse the world more easily sounds cool on paper, but I feel like this mechanic is constantly fighting with the level design in a way that means you're rarely ever able to just settle in and enjoy some consistent puzzle solving for a few minutes. You'll enter one area which functions like a "dungeon" for a few specific powerups but it turns out actually there are corners in this dungeon you can't go because you need a totally different powerup than any of the ones you've been using, necessitating a trip back to Central Hell, which is actually accomplished faster by quitting to main menu and then reloading the game than the game's own recommended method of going into the pause menu, unequipping an item, leaving the menu, pressing the now-empty button, jumping onto the bird, and then likely re-equipping the item you just unequipped upon returning to the main hub. To an extent, I try to be forgiving of the kinds of rough spots this game has because these ultimately provide Texture, and I think it's important we not urge designers to sand all of the edges off their games in service to the monolith of ~Good Game Design.~ I think some of the platforming is A Bit Stupid, but for the *most* part it's just amusing and I'm willing to roll with it. For the core exploration, though, I just don't enjoy the process of picking at one small puzzle in one random corner in the map, needing to keep track mentally of which powerups I need as I pass up on a bunch of different things that Might go somewhere (or might not go anywhere until I bring a *different* powerup I didn't realize I needed), with no real in-game way to take notes, such as putting pins in the map - and all this is made particularly egregious with powerups like the Dictionary, which doesn't actually change the way you traverse at all and thus *will* result in you just kind of doing literally the same things over again for what may be completely worthless information. I really do want to like this game, but I think a lot of things really hold me back from engaging with the parts of it that I enjoy the most.

A weird but not unwelcome hybrid of Solstice and Fez with unconventional metroidvania gating. I would probably only recommend this to people who would still play NES games and not get frustrated easily (it plays like and has the quirks of games from that era, despite being a bit more forgiving). You get access to all the upgrades required for progression near the beginning of the game, but you can only carry a certain amount of them at a time until you unlock more slots by exploring the world. Discovering what upgrades actually allow you to do and how they interact with each other is a big part of the fun. The platforming is harder than you’d think because of the perspective—you’ll have plenty of instances of poor spacial judgment—but fortunately the game’s as forgiving as it needs to be with this in mind. Typically, when you die, you immediately respawn in the same room. There are a few sequences of 4-6 rooms you’ll have to do in one go else restart in the first room of that sequence, but that’s as punishing as it gets (besides the final boss, which is kind of a nightmare). I’m hardly a master at platforming and was able to do everything without too much fuss. There’s a lot of backtracking to the same areas and you will occasionally get stumped for a while, but it doesn’t feel too bad because a) warp points and b) the world’s so packed with secrets you’ll be accessing new rooms in many of those areas until late in the game to find more keys, gems and ore. The main, overarching puzzles and mysteries of the world are hinted at but still pretty arcane and not completely logical, especially if you want true endings. Most people probably shouldn’t expect to be able to discover that last 10% of content themselves, and the map is pretty hard to use. Those are the only real complaints I have about the game, though. It’s full of original ideas, it feels fresh and classic at once, and I enjoyed it so much I binged it over a few days.

If you enjoyed the first Elephantasy, or if you are just a fan of exploration-adventure games, then I think you will enjoy Flipside. - huge world to explore - a variety of interesting powerups to combine to unlock new parts of the maps - various small platforming and puzzle challenges, as well as some deeper mysteries - lots of collectibles, and strategic choices about when/how to spend them The caveats I would mention are - there is a short PDF manual that accompanies this game, I would recommend downloading and reading it - the isometric 3-D geometry is sometimes hard to 'read', look at shadows to help you judge depth - when you have herbs, I'd bind them to the secondary action button, so you don't accidentally consume herbs while pressing the primary action button to talk to NPCs and whatnot (I made a lot of button-oopsies) I'm about 20 hours in and there's still a bit left to find, as far as I know. Very fun game.

If you are OK with pure keyboard gameplay AND you are a fan of Tunic AND you don't mind not being able to see where you jump and end up having to redo an entire platforming portion because of this AND you don't mind that there's no map, then you should buy this. The number of people to whom all four would be TRUE is exceedingly small so I can't recommend this.

[b] Update: [/b] Okay, I got an ending, and now that I have, I can't recommend this game. I managed to get to the end, by acquiring a bunch of gems. I had a thief "pop" out three items and then I used the green herbs to duplicate them, and so I cheesed getting a bunch of gems in order to bribe the fourth ghost--the bare minimum amount of ghosts to open up the tasking final rooms before the last boss. Once I got through those final rooms, I felt accomplished. However, that accomplishment was pretty much over as soon as I fought the boss, who felt really unintuitive when I was fighting. That in and of itself is fine, but the insult to injury was that [b] it makes you go through all of the final levels again, if you want to even try fighting the last boss again. [/b] I don't understand the logic behind that. It just feels like bad/sadist design. There's only one guide on the steam pages, and that is specifically for the final boss, which writes that you shouldn't even engage with the final boss before having all seven ghosts. I had to cheese getting four. I like to think I'm up for a good challenge, but this game is just not for me. [b] Original Review: [/b] I really don't want to recommend this game. But I hate beating up on a lone dev for working their heart out to make something special, and I want them to keep making games. I loved the prequel game too, but this game felt like too much for me. Here's a brief overview of how I feel playing this game: [b] Beginning - [/b] [i] Wow, there's a lot of stuff to explore, and it really throws you in the deep end. Plus, it's taking A LOT of time to explore. I don't really feel like persevering, but I paid for this, so I'll keep banging my head against the wall until I figure out where to go. [/i] [b] Middle - [/b] [i] I'm glad I persevered, this game is great and has loads of secrets and I'm finally opening up some areas. Exploring finally feels fun! [/i] [b] End - [/b] [i] Welp, I feel like I've explored everything I can. Now every place has lead to a dead end, or a puzzle that is so obtuse, that I can't figure it out. [/i] I don't want to feel like I'm banging my head against the wall anymore. If that sounds like fun to you, then buy this game. I'm going to to play a little more, to give it the college try, but I really feel like I've lost all sense of enjoyment playing this.

lost track of the time playing this one