Equal parts gaming experiment and capsule word processor, Elegy for a Dead World shifts the onus of telling a story away from developers and onto the players. Its creators refer to it as a “game about writing,” and the final product is precisely as advertised, resulting in a delightful departure from the typical game formula.
A collaboration between Dejobaan Games and Popcannibal, Elegy for a Dead World is a small indie game funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign. The game’s only goal for players is simple: as a sole survivor of an exploration mission, players must visit worlds and record their observations. This goal is played out through vivid side-scrolling environments and writing prompts scattered throughout the scenery. These prompts are denoted by quill icons, and can be approached in chronological order or revisited freely as the player starts to interpret the visual clues scattered throughout each level. Alternatively, players also have the option of writing free-form interpretations of the worlds if they’re feeling particularly intrepid or inspired.
And it’s hard not to be inspired by the game’s beautiful environments. The red sky of a charred world contrasts starkly against broken machinery. Rolling violet plains seem small beneath a massive sculpture of three titans. Alabaster snow slowly buries the last remnants of a crumbling city. Visual cues—and, at times, written cues —prompt but don’t prod players into specific interpretations. Strange fixtures on the landscape and sound effects at key points certainly seem to tell a story, but feel more like visual blank spaces themselves, begging to be understood by the gaze of the player. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide what befell these once great civilizations.
To spark inspiration, the game allows players to write using a variety of goals or perspectives, otherwise known as writing challenges, which determine what prompt formats they’ll be encountering in the game world. There are 27 of these writing challenges total—9 for each of the three worlds. These challenges may have players writing from the perspective of a traveler returning to their home planet or from that of a mass-murderer. Other prompts inspire players to rewrite great literary works from each of the planet’s inspirations: Byron, Keats, and Shelley. Still more utilitarian writing prompts instruct the player to find grammatical errors. Finally, there’s the option to use no writing challenge at all, leaving a blank canvas for players to fill with their own tales.
It’s rare that I encounter a game that works as both a creative writing and instructional device. Elegy reminds me of a game-ified version of Zen Writer or Written? Kitten!, both of which are processors designed to inspire creative writing with their ambience. At times I found myself terribly tempted to use it in a classroom setting, as I struggle each semester to break up the monotony of teaching grammar and proofreading skills. Primarily, I was playing Elegy for myself in order to flex my creative writing muscles and see what new approaches I could take to each world.
That said, I was left wanting more. Once I completed the gauntlet of three worlds, I found that the initial thrill of exploration and discovery yielded to familiarity. While this helped me complete subsequent writing challenges, there wasn’t too much by way of replayability.
Fortunately, I quickly found my attention occupied by the reading feature, which allowed me to see what others have written. If a particular story is particularly enjoyable, Elegy allows players to give a story commendations, which rank it higher in popularity and praise the creator. This served as a potential litmus test and additional content. I was able to gauge how close my tales were to the community’s collective interpretation, which often reaffirmed my confidence in my story or pushed me to try even harder. There were also a few occasions when I was simply floored by what new perspective someone had applied to the now familiar landscapes. Such moments enriched the gameplay value, which makes sense for a game where the players write the narrative.
As a game, Elegy is a refreshing departure from the oversaturation of shoot-em-ups and RPGs. It’s an artfully composed game about writing, and it handily accomplishes that simple goal. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of understanding this purpose before purchasing the game, and I suspect that some impulse-buyers may still be bewildered (or even upset) by its lack of typical mechanics. However, seasoned novelists and creative-writing newbies alike can find both inspiration and a worthwhile experience in Elegy for a Dead World.
This review is based on a code for Steam sent to SideQuesting by the publisher.
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