“Elsinore” Review: To Be or To Be or To Be or-
I was an objectively bad student when it came to the literary canon. I couldn’t get into any of the stories or works presented to me throughout high school and college, chief among them the works of Shakespeare. So, a decade after graduating high school, six years after graduating college, Elsinore (Golden Glitch Games) may not strike one as the logical next step after being so anti-canon for most of my life. Luckily, Elsinore does what the canon (or traditional education, take your pick) couldn’t quite do: engage me in the story, the characters, and the overarching tragedy of Hamlet, and, enticingly enough, give me the opportunity to change it all.
As Ophelia, players interact with myriad characters, learn about and influence events yet to come in the halls of Elsinore, ultimately fail one way or another, and try again through a mysterious time-loop mechanic. This allows Ophelia (and, by proxy, the player) to attempt a new loop in the penultimate days of Hamlet’s tale, armed with the information they gained from their previous loops. These interactions, events, and changes form the basis for Elsinore’s main gameplay loop.
While the game is primarily text-based, it does not boast a fully voice-acted script, only snippets of text getting such treatment to convey a character’s mood, like one might find in visual novels. It doesn’t detract from the content in any way, well-written as it all is, and the character portraits (drawn in such a way to helpfully discern the different characters early on and easily throughout) do plenty alone to convey the scene’s and dialogue’s tones.
The score (lead composer Adam Gubman) faded in and out in the background, perfectly setting the stage for whatever dramatic, comic, or tragic scene I found myself in. When serving as background, the soundtrack fits the nature of the experience perfectly. When it suddenly jumped to the forefront, there was a punch of dread and foreboding to accompany it, notably in the waning dawn of the four-day cycles. Even the absence of music, punctuated only by Ophelia’s footfalls around the castle, have their own distinct impact on the experience.
Period-style music relies primarily on the simpler tunes and melodies of a similar group of instruments allows for a deeper immersion into the tragic timewarp, akin to a small music pit in a theater production. For all its ability to blend into the background, its simplicity, the production and composition of the soundtrack feels well done and perfectly suited to the experience. The sort of tunes you can buy off Steam and plug into a fantasy tabletop RPG game pretty easily, or enjoy on their own merit.
The graphics are simple, but well-realized, as one can hope for a smaller setting like Elsinore. The castle and grounds feel like a set of paintings, and I occasionally found myself appreciating the little brushstrokes on a piece of shrubbery. It is simultaneously functional and beautiful. That said, the 3D-rendered cast cavorting around feel far more functional than aesthetic. Their movements are simple, and when the models run together, they occasionally start clipping through one another’s bodies, but aside from that, players can still tell them all apart easily enough. It’s not enough to jar players out of an experience, but is can be unintentionally comedic amidst the drama.
The interface, blessedly, is introduced in parts, giving players the chance to get comfortable with the basic chronological doo-dads (maps, objectives, etc.) at their disposal before introducing new ones (speeding up time, auto-restarts). Players should have the full arsenal of tools at their disposal and know what everything does within a cycle or two, fully prepared to venture out and change history for the better.
Information is presented succinctly without overwhelming players, but enough detail is also available (especially as events and characters start to flesh out) to provide enough background to plan ahead in a loop effectively. What I came to enjoy was that the objective/”Leads” screen was so detailed, but did not provide a direct Waypoint to accomplish the objective. The onus was, and remained on, me to complete the goal, not follow a map icon to victory, and I felt a greater sense of accomplishment for it.
All said, I have not (to this point, in late 2020) read or seen Hamlet performed. I knew about the speech with Yorick, and the fact that it was a tragedy, and aside from that, I went in pretty blind. But Elsinore is kind to others like me, not requiring players an inkling of knowledge about Shakespeare or Hamlet before diving in. That said, there are a number of in-jokes that fans of the Bard may discover in their journeys. Additionally, the writers have all but updated the original script and style of Shakespeare’s dialogue to be that much more accessible to readers in the 21st century, while still retaining the impact and the emotion behind the words.
From my uninitiated perspective, the story, holding its own while pulling from preexisting material, is still gripping, time-loop elements and all. The desire to rewrite history, to change a fixed path, to avoid tragedy in a story so fraught with it, is a compelling enough reason for anyone, player, thespian, or otherwise, to pick up Elsinore and see if they could do better.
Everything Elsinore does is an augmentation of how the canon is presented to so many, be they students or not: by giving an element of control, players recognize the tragedy of the original production, but get a chance to, by the polarity of genre, strive for a new, different ending. They get to know the characters, perhaps genuinely care about them, flaws and all, and want to see the best for them…or want to see them perish that much more. They get to choose which stories they care for most in that moment, and watch those scenes unfold. All of this, plus the easy-to-learn mechanics and intuitive game design, paves the way for a narratively-accessible experience for folk throughout the spectrum of familiarity! If, for just a moment, all Elsinore is a stage, then you would be lucky to be a player in it.
