I have never been one for point-and-click adventures, but I thought it would be good to get out of my comfort zone with Elroy and the Aliens. I enjoyed this game to a point, but there were many times when I got frustrated because the goals and missions were not clear.
Elroy and the Aliens has a good concept of a story and a great cast of characters that get the players ready to explore the world and enjoy the mysteries, starting off with a simple rocket failing and exploding, while much of the story focuses on where Elroy’s father disappeared to 18 years ago.
A lot of the gameplay is focused on puzzles and listening carefully to instructions. There is one part where Elroy must read and memorize a script in order to splice audio he has which was a lot of fun to get through, even though I had to start over multiple times to get the lines correct. I also enjoyed having to use the robots in the game to complete different tasks that get you to the next goal. There were times when I could not find the items that allowed me to get to the next part of the story. One such thing that I was unable to find was the hose you need to get gas from a car. I looked everywhere for it and failed until I finally found it on the inside of a building I had already explored.
Elroy and the Aliens’ puzzles were some of the best I have done in years. There are two that stand out: the mirror laser puzzle when fixing the electrical system in the alien world and the rotating puzzle when at the archeological dig site. The rotating puzzle became very easy to me after the 3rd puzzle was completed and trying to get the energy to hit the crystals was complex, yet easy to solve. Most of the puzzles in the game, though, were a lot of fun – I especially loved navigating through a minefield.
The art style is absolutely one of my favorite parts of Elroy and the Aliens. I love the old 1990s animation and the two-dimensional look to it. The animations are smooth and allow the player to feel like Elroy and Peggie while looking for key story items. The devices and key items players are supposed to get are also very creative, especially when it comes to the aliens’ missions.
The dialogue is fully voice-acted, which I enjoyed and the way the developers used their voice actors was very smart. They had over 20 voice actors throughout the game, with many reprising different roles for the over 60 different characters. This allowed for Elroy and the Aliens to truly immerse players into the atmosphere and world-building. The one thing I will say about the dialogue is that around 75% of the time I felt that it was unrealistic and often unnatural in many ways. This is not the voice actors’ fault because their performances were great! It was just the writing that threw me off.
On this degree, the story often felt predictable. I knew immediately who the bad guy was and knew what happened to Elroy’s father those 18 years ago. The small parts of the story that were sidelined, I thought, were some of the best. One such example was with the Blood Moon Festival. I truly thought that there was going to be more to that point and felt disappointed that I couldn’t get into the festival and get more information that way. The blood moon felt like it should have been a main plotline even though it wasn’t.
For about 70% of Elroy and the Aliens, players are solely on Earth, finding clues to get to the mysterious missing train station. The last 30% of the game is then focused on an alien planet. This to me seemed like a good and bad balance because I was expecting to get to the aliens a lot sooner. I mean, it is right there in the name of the game! Although there were hints of aliens throughout the story, such as meeting with Charlie who is full of conspiracy theories about brain waves and other weird space theories.
Many of the items I would often get were useless or had one use in the story. Using items is not a bad thing, especially for Elroy and the Aliens. It’s the fact that items that are pickupable can sometimes have no use, which was frustrating. One such item was the machete, which I eventually found out had no use. I tried using it to cut plants or pipes and was told, “I don’t think that item should be used here.” So then why was it able to be picked up?
Ultimately, I enjoyed Elroy and the Aliens to an extent and thought that the story was fun, even though at times it felt very robotic and overcomplicated itself unnecessarily.
Sara played Elroy and the Aliens on PC with a provided review copy.
