Elsie

Elsie (2024) is a running, jumping and shooting game where you save the world from disaster by rescuing guardians from robotic terrors. You defeat enemies and carefully parry attacks because dying means you have to start over. Randomly generated levels that change every run and a host of novel abilities that unlock as you play make for a surprisingly novel challenge of gradual refinement and improvement.

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You play Elsie, an android created by the genius Dr Grey to save the world from disaster. You travel the planet, defeating robots and braving extreme conditions to rescue the guardians and restore balance to the world. Play involves running and jumping through the randomly generated stages, using your gun to defeat the robotic enemies you encounter. You can parry enemy attacks through precisely timed button presses, creating a moment where enemies are vulnerable to your attacks.

As you play, you upgrade your traversal and combat abilities, enabling new movement techniques and ways to fight enemies. When you die, you start again from the beginning but gain access to new upgrades that, combined with your increasing knowledge of the game, enable you to get further each run. To rescue the guardians, you must face off against the most powerful robot foes, learning their attack patterns and exploiting every opportunity to defeat them.

The result is a game that creates an unusual challenge where failure is part of learning how you can ultimately succeed. Gradually increasing your knowledge of enemy attacks and the best ways to counter them is good fun, and each new run is another opportunity to experiment and find the best upgrades and strategies.

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Our examiner, Ben Kendall, first checked Elsie 2 weeks ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 10 days ago.