The Fall of Elena Temple (Review)

The Fall of Elena Temple
aka Elena Temple 2.
Platform: Nintendo Switch, Xbox, Playdate
Released April 30, 2024
Developed by GrimTalin

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Most games don’t require the most in-depth reviews. Take GrimTalin’s new indie sequel to their cult hit The Adventures of Elena Temple. That game was based on searching a fifty-screen map for treasure. This time around, Elena stars in a single-screen puzzler based mostly around the concept of falling. And it’s a really, really short game at only twenty stages. I don’t know exactly how much time I needed to finish them all, as I knocked out a few stages at a time, then did something else, then turned on the game and knocked out a few more, and so forth. The fact that I played The Fall of Elena Temple like that and still finished the whole experience in a single day says something. All in? It probably took me an hour-and-a-half. A really fun and perfectly acceptable ninety minutes, mind you. I can honestly say I was never bored. Unlike the previous Elena Temple adventure, this is 99% a puzzle game, with only the faintest hint of platforming, making this feel more like a spin-off than a proper sequel.

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This is especially true thanks to the graphics looking a bit like Game Boy and a bit like Playdate. The previous Elena Temple was themed around a game by a hapless game developer who kept making their flagship game for the wrong platforms. This time around, it’s more like “hey, remember Game Boy?” You can zoom as far in or out as you wish. I needed to zoom all the way in, but your mileage may vary. The object is to collect all the coins and then get to the exit. The big twist is that most rooms have an item that grants you the ability to undo your previous fall from a platform, only you get to keep any progress you made towards the whole coin collecting. It’s actually a pretty good twist, but it’s also one that puzzle aficionados should be able to reverse-engineer with only a bit of trial and error. It’s intuitive to use, at least. The amount of falls you’re able to undo varies from room to room, and each fall is numbered so you know where the undo button is sending you. It works wonderfully and it does make for a fun gimmick. In fact, it’s so fun that I was sorry when it wasn’t in a room.

Probably the best thing I can say about Elena 2 is that it successfully creates “THE BIG OVERWHELM” which is my term for puzzle games where, at first, a level seems so vast and multi-dimensional that you initially think “okay, maybe time I’ve met my match.” The beauty of THE BIG OVERWHELM is that it doesn’t require a complex puzzle, but only the appearance of one. Look at Portal, where none of the puzzles are THAT hard, no matter how the scenario is presented. The payoff is, when you actually finish the stage that looked so overwhelming at first glance, it’s that much sweeter. The Fall of Elena Temple pulls that off, which is pretty impressive for a minimalist puzzler. Plus, Elena 2 keeps throwing twists at you the entire length of the game. Crumbling floors. Disappearing/reappearing floors. Boots that let you skip a space. Hearts that let you absorb one hit of damage. Keys. Snakes. Spiders. All of it paced out so that there’s something new in nearly every level, right to the bitter end. Actually, past the bitter end. I couldn’t believe my eyes when a never previously used magnet showed up in one of the three bonus stages, and then even more stuff is added after that. Hey, finally “bonus stages” that live up to the name. I can’t stress enough: this is GrimTalin’s best game and one of the absolute best puzzlers I’ve played in the last few years. The Fall of Elena Temple is really good.

Even with THE BIG OVERWHELM, Elena’s levels are rarely actually as overwhelming as they look. Oh, and it took me about half the game for my brain to stop needing to tell itself “you can’t climb the vines, stupid.”

But, there’s really two big problems with the whole “stay fresh until the end” design mentality. The first is that, when you only have twenty levels, by necessity, the learning curve is going to be more like a gentle slope. You need the difficulty to scale, so you can’t do simple tutorial levels with the new items, but you also can’t really go completely bonkers with them either. Which, don’t get me wrong: I prefer Elena’s scaling to something like Gateways, where the learning curve was more like a straight wall made out of middle fingers (and mind you, that’s a game I liked a lot). But, there were also maybe, at most, only three or four levels that really had me scratching my head, and one of them was a “bonus” stage. The other big problem is that most of the ideas for special items are fun, but with the exception of the undo mechanic, they all feel underutilized. The twenty-three levels combined absolutely does not feel like it stretches the limits of what this puzzle formula can do. I suppose GrimTalin could do DLC, or a special edition later on like they did with the first Elena Temple. Hell, I’d be fine if they released level packs at $1 a pop for, say, ten new stages and just kept releasing new ones for quick cash, since that initial $3 felt underpriced to begin with. $3 for ninety damn fine minutes of puzzle goodness? What else are you going to do with $3? For me, I had to decide on a large lime slushie or this. I’m sure I made the right choice. Pretty sure. No, wait.. yea, I’m sure.
Verdict: YES!
$2.99 was parched in the making of this review.