Ellen

Ellen is an intense 2D pixel art psychological horror game. Players must uncover the truth about the brutal and mysterious murder of the Smith family and discover the whereabouts of the only missing family member, a little girl named Ellen. [u]Pros[/u] + Excellent sound design. + Atmospheric storytelling. + Tension building with great scares. + Intriguing, eerie story. + Detailed notes and audio tapes that convey the story. + Many different areas to explore. [u]Cons[/u] - Flashlight battery drains very quickly. This lead to me searching for some objects in complete darkness just to proceed. - A fair amount of backtracking around the house, it wasn't always clear where I was supposed to go. - [i]Nitpick:[/i] No subtitles for the three audio cassette tapes. Not a big deal, but due to the characters accent and for those hard of hearing, subtitles may be a good addition. [h1]Story[/h1] You play as an ambitious young detective named James who wants to uncover the truth about the brutal slayings of the Smith family. After hearing rumours from local townsfolk that people are beginning to see ghostly silhouettes inside the abandoned Smith family home, James decides to take matters into his own hands. One year prior to this, a seemingly normal family were all brutally murdered, except the daughter of the house, Ellen. In the lead up to their untimely demise, they had recorded seeing and hearing strange happenings around the home. At the time, police dismissed this idea of paranormal activity and refuted that it played a part in their deaths, but James decides to delve deeper and enters the house on his own accord. Throughout the remainder of the game, players will explore the Smith family home and uncover the Smith family residents' last moments, accompanied by graphic imagery and detailed notes that convey the real truth. Find out why Ellen was left unhurt, where she has been for the last year and ultimately discover the true happenings in the Smiths' residence at White Hill. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1777689638 [h1]Gameplay[/h1] Players explore the creepy, abandoned house and find useful objects in order to proceed. The aim is to find out more about the residents and if the rumours are true, or conversely, if the police theory is true and no paranormal events took place. The gameplay of Ellen is relatively simple but it does have a handful of light puzzles to keep players busy. There are also plenty of interactive objects scattered around and notes to find. Throughout James' adventure, there are a few enemies lurking about that will instantly kill you if you get too close. To avoid dying, players can hide behind certain bookshelves that display a blue outline, and simply unveil yourself when the coast is clear. The enemies are very simple and although they look quite cool and menacing with the pixel graphics, they are not the smartest and cannot hear loud running or notice if you are standing directly behind them. Despite this, the enemies were genuinely scary and there were a few scenes which took me by surprise and I had to run / think fast to escape. Some of the puzzles are a bit vague and I wasn't sure where I was supposed to go. This typically lead to me backtracking throughout the whole mansion and just figuring it out by random chance. I did find it a tad difficult to remember what was in each room of the mansion which lead to me going to the wrong places, however, this may be just my bad memory. The control mechanics were a bit strange and used backspace, I and tab buttons. In order to use an item, one must first press I, click on the item with M1 and then close the inventory with backspace, just to use it in game via a quickslot, opened with tab. This seems unnecessarily complicated and awkward to me. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1777689448 [h1]Graphics[/h1] Ellen features standard 2D pixel art graphics. I found some of the puzzles a bit tricky to emulate due to this design and I couldn't see the exact detail of a picture which I had to copy. Nevertheless, I found the pixel art to add a unique personality to the psychological horror aspects of the game and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved the decision to add cockroaches crawling about on players screens, it was a very eerie effect and although not a totally unique idea, it was interesting and added a lot of character to the Smith residence. It just goes to show that games do not need the finest graphics to portray a sense of horror. [h1]Sound[/h1] Ellen relies heavily on its excellent sound design to pull off many of its scares and to create an atmospheric experience. It also utilised the importance of silence very well and at times, had me on the edge of my seat. [h1]Glitches and performance[/h1] I did not experience any problems, it played smoothly [RTX 2060, i5, 16gb]. [h1]Price and Content[/h1] It took me about 5 hours to complete the game, however I have seen people complete it in less than 3. It depends how fast you are at solving puzzles and figuring out where to go. As I struggled with this, a lot of time was spent backtracking, trying to figure out where to go. For $AU14.50 I can't really substantiate the cost for hours of gameplay. Although it was fun and had a decent story, nothing was entirely memorable that stands out above other pixel art horrors and so I would only recommend this on a sale. [h1] Summary[/h1] Ellen is an interesting 2D pixel art psychological horror game that features atmospheric storytelling, a great soundtrack and decent scares. I would recommend this game to all psychological horror enthusiasts who love a good, mysterious story. This review copy was provided to the OCG-Curations curator. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34936724][quote]Follow my curator page, [b]Cookie Reviews[/b], if you enjoyed this review and want to see more like it.

Ok...This was a ride. I want to preface this by saying; I would not recommend this game for what it's worth. In fact, I really wish I was able to get my money back if at all possible. The game's trailer leads viewers to believe a very creepy, eerie type of gameplay, which it does! At first. The next parts of this review will possibly include spoilers, so please be wary, new players. -- The game begins with a standard spooky theme; possible haunted house, a cold case/closed case, murder mystery. During the first few moments of gameplay, things are tense and the game does very well at keeping the paranoia with surround sound and ambient lighting. However, things get frustrating quickly. The flashlight that the player will need throughout 3-5 rooms of the main building does not last long enough for the initial speed of the character, nor does it indicate where/how to recharge the battery (new batteries are not around, and after finding the first battery, the second and only other one does not show up for quite a while after.). The format of the 'text boxes' is placed inconveniently to the upper part of the player character's head, and foreground textures/beams/spiderwebs obscure the boxes, leaving players unable to read possible crucial information. On that note, after the flashlight runs out, the dialogue boxes are not illuminated, making it impossible to read whatever may be in any pitch black rooms. These dark rooms may sometimes contain intractable items and puzzles, making this equally frustrating. The flashlight battery runs out quickly, and hidden in the upper right corner of the screen is the battery's 'life' bar. I understand the optional screen lighting and dithering/anti-aliasing are available, but these options do nothing to make it clearer or more noticeable until the bar turns red. The playthrough's i've watched others play of this game encountered the same issues, what with being without the flashlight and battery for most of the gameplay. The next few issues I have with this game are continuity errors and/or poor language or articulation of written details. What I mean by this is: The notes and messages throughout the game rarely, if at all, explain the ghostly phenomena happening around the character. The notes sometimes contain run-on sentences, metric vs. imperial errors (The game takes place in England, which does not use the standard US imperial system including 'miles' and 'feet' etc.) , and whatever the 'story' may be is completely lost over time. The story suddenly turns into an amalgamation of unresolved cold cases turned haunted house, to something about an abusive father, the player character supposedly experiencing a form of hallucination, to a prior family being burned under the accusation of witchcraft? There's a lot to take in, to say the least. The 'voice acting' in parts of the game found on tapes throughout the game are sometimes difficult to understand especially without subtitles. The conversation(s) sound very forced, very flat and cringe-worthy scripted. There is no emotion or sense of urgency for the characters involved, and the random inclusion of one character being from Mexico vs. Spain is completely irrelevant when it comes to later notes given/obtained. In the beginning, there's no information detailing the name of the wife/lady of the household, so most players will believe the woman described in the first notes/diary entries noted [spoiler]of whom committed suicide[/spoiler] , is said 'mother', yet the revelation that she is instead the maid/helper of the house is not made clear till close to the end of the game. Details about the mother rarely mention her name, and the whole thing about it is completely confusing and takes me out of the 'world' of this game and just makes no sense. The 'mapping' of controls is wonky and lack of customization within the game makes this very difficult. Even formatting outside the game, requires both use of mouse and keyboard through trial and error at times. There also exist multiple bugs wherein the character's idle animation will continue to play if the player character is injured, and some items do not show up in the inventory despite showing an icon above the characters' head indicating otherwise. It's also confusing to include items not usable in the inventory, if everything else is somehow able to be set to the quick menu. (Example being the lighter, never once mentioned or used, yet is part of the players' inventory for random purposes?) , the "puzzles" are hard to understand and a mess of pixels and took longer than necessary to complete as it was close to impossible to comprehend what the 'image' was supposed to be (This despite being shown what the image 'should' look like on the side), there's just.....way too much. It feels like this entire game was rushed with only the trailer somewhat polished to show the potential horror elements. TL;DR: PROS: -Atmospheric music -Lulls the player into false sense of security at times, only to be surprised by the paranoia inducing ambient sounds and movements. -Beautiful execution of fluid pixel animation / walking animations. -Death sequences are terrifying initially CONS: -lack of quality articulation in written notes -poor controls/mapping -poor quality in text boxes being completely blackened when in dark rooms, making it impossible to read the characters' interactions where necessary. -story branches into seemingly random tangents and no real closure -poor voice acting / flat emotion -bugs mentioned among other things Overall, I highly doubt I would've spent as much time on this game as I have, had I known the issues ahead or even watched partial playthroughs of said game. I would not recommend this game for replay value nor would I for especially streamer/gameplay based playthroughs specifically on the notion of being unable to read crucial points of the game in the aforementioned dark areas. This game was basically spooky, random nonsense with a flat overall tone and fancy animations where necessary. If you're looking for a true, horror yet pixel experience, you're best looking elsewhere, as this one just falls under frustrating and confusing.

Атмосферная пиксельная игра про паронормальщину

The story was surprisingly pretty good and well done, although most of it is through things such as notes and pictures. While not entirely a fan of stories told via items that are found during gameplay, I think it was done well enough in Ellen. Also, the main parts of the story are unmissable, which is good, but trying to find all the items definitely give a better scope of the story. I really enjoyed the ending. The graphics were really great, and I loved that there were foreground graphics (and that crawling bug, a nice and hated addition for sure). There were a few jumpscares in the game but nothing overally annoying or unnecessary. The puzzles were decent enough and nothing hard enough where I got stuck or confused. The monsters were easy enough if you didn't rush through it like I did and thus kept dying to the same monster in the same spot because of being impatience! The game autosaves, which is nice enough, but in some spots (such as in the ending) it can really really suck because if you die (like I kept doing), you have to start all the way in the beginning of that area. A manual save would have been a very nice addition to the game. Some of the textboxes get caught off due to where the item is located on the screen. Some of the foreground items also cut off the textboxes. I really didn't notice the importance of the flashlight beyond the first scene when you get the flashlight and in rooms that are completely dark. Since the battery drains so fast, I tried to limit the use of the flashlight and ended up with nearly a full battery left (I believe I found 3 batteries total in the game). I'm not much of a fan for games that have stamina bars for running, since it just makes the game feel like it drags on. It really didn't make much sense to have one in this game, since the scenes where you were forced to run didn't make use of the stamina bar (for good reason). It really felt like it was only an addition to make the game last a bit longer. Overall, I really enjoyed the story and definitely would recommend this game for that alone. For those that scare easily, you'll definitely get a good scare from this game but it's a game that you should be able to beat without having a heartattack. The price does seem a bit high personally, since realistically I probably only have around 5 hours of gameplay due to idle and there really wasn't much variety/difficulty in puzzles with most of the gametime being backtracking to figure out what to do next. So, would probably say grab it on sale.

I'm stuck and the battery is dead.

I played the demo and after being an early game tester I really enjoyed the final version. I recommend this game to anyone who enjoys a good atmospheric horror game with a catchy story.

居然不是核能手电筒 一直没有注意😂 最后用完电池卡关了。。。

Creepy, surrealistic pixel-horror here from newer developer Red Mount, Ellen puts you in the shoes of P.I. James who travels to an abandon old house on the fringe of White Hill in order to find clues and solve the case of a murdered family. In his attempt to sneak in, he ends up falling through the floor; starting his journey in the house's basement. It doesn't take long for him to figure out that things are more than a little f'ed up... Ellen's not a reinvention of this genre within a genre but an exercise in trying to cull and display the best elements of the style. You'll be moving left to right, scouring every nook and cranny for items to unlock progression while reading notes, listening to tapes and doing your best to dig up the dirt that nobody's been able to excavate thus far. Things aren't as simple as you hoped; a couple of neatly designed, weird-out monsters stalk the various areas you'll explore and you're going to need to run or hide from 'em...lest you want to face a one hit death. All of the mechanics work well-enough (I especially enjoyed the quick access inventory you can store possibly necessary items in for speedy use) and the general cycle of gameplay kept me wanting to move forward. Additionally, the ambient sounds/score are well-done for what there is, there's even a few bits of voice-acting and the trippy, peyote-laced visuals look pretty darn good for an indie dev just getting their feet wet. In my personal pixel horror hierarchy where you've got Lone Survivor, Horns of Fear, Settled, The Long Reach...etc. on my favorite side and Uncanny Valley, Claire and Firewood on my "ehhh" side, Ellen stands firm in the middle, above_average ground. There's definitely a lot of potential shown here. Not all is perfect as in some of the more detailed environments the graphics wanted to chug, one of the puzzles interactive screens stays stuck on your monitor till you solve it and other quirks show in its obvious low-budget. Yet the dark mystery at Ellen's center drives you forward and there's a lot of things that you can examine/get commentary on while the monster bits are fairly solid without being annoying (doing just enough to make the gameplay a touch more varied). There's more here than I expected, let's put it that way. If pixel-horror is something that you enjoy then I'd certainly recommend Ellen. It's difficult to find browsing the Steam Store and I thought I'd do my part to give it a little nod since I had a good time getting to the end (which took me about 3 hours). I can see even classic adventure game detectives possibly getting a little jolt of fun out of the experience as well.

I've beaten the first chapter and I am loving the game so far. It runs well on my laptop, the scares are terrifying (play it with the lights off and wearing headphones for a better experience), and it's just an all around tense thriller, loaded with frightening imagery and sounds.

Good sound design and graphical aesthetic. Lighting, shaders, and effects look really cool in my opinion! For the full price of $10, some mechanics and level design could use a bit of work. Examples: • Some bookshelves you hide behind, some you don't. • Plants and other objects repeating as you walk with the same descriptions (if it doesn't add to gameplay, atmosphere, or fun then it's just breaking immersion.) It's better to just leave some of these objects out or shorten the hallways instead of having a Flintstone's effect. • A lot of very slow backtracking through areas (run doesn’t seem to work early game at all) • Controller support is half working/broken currently and kind of needed considering how long you have to hold down a button to walk. • Case notes were a bit confusing at first as it wasn't completely clear that each line of ???????? was for a different case note. You might want to apply the same method you used for collecting visuals or have some delimiter to show they are selectible. • Goals / objective was not always apparent so I spent a bit of time walking back and forth trying to trigger the next scripted event. You might want to watch someone who hasn't played the game before and just observe how they interact. • Having quick slot items being the only way to use items was a bit wonky for me. I didn't understand why some items were usable in quickslot and others not. I kept wanting to use the lighter on the drum of oil / gasoline as the game hinted hard at that but it appears that wasn't designed that way early game. If I find more stuff I'll post them in forums. But recommending game solely on the fact that I want to see more from this developer.