A genius roboticist their bevy of powerful robot guardians that go suddenly rogue and turn on their creator and attack humanity. A single new robot is built to avoid going rogue and sent to stop the robot guardians and their army of minions. No, it’s not the original Megaman, but the inspiration behind Knight Shift Games and Playtonic’s Elsie is plain for everyone to see. It’s not exactly trying to be coy about it, though it’s also not copying the same formula either. Instead, Elsie is an action roguelike, much in the same vein as Dead Cells or also Megaman-inspired 30XX, but with its own takes on the formula.
In Elsie, you are Elsie, last and greatest creation of Dr. Grey, built after her previous creations, the Guardians, went berserk and started causing all sorts of calamities. You are both operating out of Sapir Wharf and Dr. Grey stays behind while Elsie ventures into various themed zones, Skyport, Garden, Night City, Metal Foundry, etc., in order to gain information and resources, find and rescue various people displaced by the Guardian’s attacks, and ultimately defeat the Guardians and get to the bottom of the mystery of their going haywire.
To do this, Elsie must run and gun her way through the various city zones, blasting enemies, picking up XP, grabbing various upgrades, amassing currency and eventually finding her way to fight a boss, be it a generic encounter or one of the Guardians she has set out to fight. As Elsie is a platformer rogue-lite, it’s best described as taking place over a series of runs, most of which will end in death or dead ends. At the conclusion of a run for whatever reason, Elsie is warped back to her home base, reverted to level one and most of her loot is taken from her. I say most because there are some game currencies that you keep, and there are some upgrades that persist even after completing a run. There’s scrap, used for unlocking various features in the wharf and in levels like Dr Grey’s lab, larger shops in levels, “bonfires” for mid-level healing, and unlocking certain upgrades for Elsie, like increased drop rates for health, keys and armor, starting runs with one key to unlock purple chests with stronger upgrades, and more. Then there’s the coins, which are primarily used to unlock upgrades and pre-equip them for the next run, and meal tickets, which can be handed to the chef to buy and unlock food items which heal Elsie and give her extra boosts. The most previous of the commodity is scrap, and a lot of Elsie will be spent grinding for scrap for abilities in Dr Grey’s lab and unlock things like the ability to boosts Elsie’s stats at bonfires during levels.
So what does a given run look like? Well, you will start with a basic autofire gun, a laser subweapon with a cooldown, a secondary ability to refill your energy instantly, and the ability to run, wall jump, dash, airdash, do a stomp attack, and parry. Of note is that firing your gun and using stomps and dashes take some energy, and if you run out, you can’t dash or fire your gun until you regenerate your energy back up to a certain point, so managing your energy reserves is also important. Your parry is also quite powerful and can let you ignore damage from any attack and do a countermove, but the timing is precise and there’s a short cooldown after using it. Once you get into a level you set about destroying enemies for XP and bits – the game’s last currency, only usable in levels to buy upgrades from vending machines – and looking for chests and the door forward. Whenever you level up, you can pick an upgrade from a random but fairly standardized list, usually to increase your attack speed, energy regeneration, or critical chance, but also things like the chance to spawn fireflies that float around and attack any enemy that wanders into their range, or to fire a boomerang on a dash. You can also find these in levels, sometimes in yellow chests, but more likely in purple chests which require a key, or on a plinth after completing a ‘break the target’ minigame or sometimes in a room where you can choose one of three offered upgrades. For the most part the only requirement to get past a room is to get to the exit, with the reward of XP and money tempting you to stay and fight, but there are also Arena rooms that force you to stay in a room until you have defeated every enemy through several waves of combat. During certain quiet rooms you can meet up with displaced people to take back to the Wharf, or get updates on the plot before a big boss fight.
Elsie has one more basic power she can bust out every so often and that’s a temporary super mode that allows her to ignore the cooldown of her parry ability and fire it off essentially non stop, and every parry is a success, allowing you to power through frantic trap rooms and boss combos for a few seconds. It recharges every time Elsie deals damage, so you can probably fire it off two or three times in a particular level, so it’s best used in Arena rooms with powerful shielded enemies to break their barriers and give Elsie some breathing room while your energy recharges and abilities cool down.
Once you get to the end of a level, you will fight a boss. This can either be a generic fight against a stronger enemy, or one of the guardians. At first you will always fight a powerful boss and then later you will be locked into fighting the guardian, and then it becomes randomized as to which one you’ll fight. Defeat the boss and you get a huge drop of bits and coins and get to move to a new area, unless you’ve hit a temporary dead end. Defeat a guardian for the first time and the same thing applies, but you get a lore dump the next time you return to the Wharf.
There is voice acting and it is all excellent. Almost every single character has a voice actor, and it makes for extremely tense and high energy boss fights when Elsie and a Guardian banter before their fight, or when Elsie, that reformed Guardian, and Dr. Grey talk back at the Wharf. There’s also special dialogue for when you fight a Guardian after defeating it, since it’s not technically the actual Guardian you’re fighting anymore. These interactions really add to the excellent presentation, along with the crisp retro-styled graphics, the excellent sound effects, and the banging soundtracks for each level.
Like a lot of roguelike games with ability combinations, a lot of the learning curve as well as the fun is figuring out what ability combos work best for you and hoping to get them all during a run, and boy there are a lot of them. I still haven’t encountered or unlocked them all. As a Rogue-lite, Elsie definitely offers a lot of playable hours for the buck, though a lot of that is essentially being forever on the grind for scrap and coins. But don’t worry, you’ll still be having fun and listening to some amazing tunes while you do it.
Tim reviewed Elsie on PC with a review code.
