Elsie Review – A Roguelike Bullet Hell Packed With Chaotic Fun

In 2019, Noisy Pixel attended our first PAX West, where we stumbled upon Elsie and developer Knight Shift Games. From then on, I knew this would be a title I would follow to its release, and low and behold, five years later, here we are. Thankfully, the game has always been enjoyable to experience through various Early Access tests and previews. Still, roguelike games require a refined gameflow that keeps players playing across multiple failed attempts. Although the challenge is high, Elsie brings some unique systems to the genre that allow it to stand out.

Elsie’s World: The Struggle for Planet Ekis

Elsie takes place in a world protected by a group of androids known as The Guardians. A researcher named Dr. Grey is responsible for creating these robots, but they’ve recently gone offline, and there are reports of chaos spreading across Planet Ekis. To fight back against The Guardians, Dr. Grey created Elsie, who must journey through biomes in search of them to bring peace back to the lands. After the first boss, things start to become a bit more clear that Dr Grey and Elsie are in for a difficult fight. A mysterious hacker has compromised the Guardians, and the ethics and responsibilities of these androids are put on the line.

The unique dodge and parry system stands out in the heat of battle, making combat both engaging and rewarding.

As Elsie puts herself in danger to rebuild a haven for survivors, the narrative dips into rather emotional places. Elsie is still very young, and her curiosity and excitement are often portrayed during scenes with Dr Grey and even adversaries. Her loyalty is never questioned, but she does learn to make her own decisions, which is nice to see from a narrative standpoint. That said, I don’t think the supporting cast, outside of Dr. Grey, receives any significant growth. After you defeat the guardians, a new character is unlocked, and you’re free to enjoy some pretty fun roguelike gameplay systems, which we’ll get into now.

Intricate Roguelike Systems That Keep You Hooked

Elsie is a roguelike bullet hell, but a lot is going on under the hood, which tells me that balance and refinement are likely the most significant reasons for the delay. The game is rather challenging, but the slow burn of new items, store options, and overall load-out customization shows that this team put in the work to understand how far to push the player and keep them coming back for more. Like any roguelike, you lose many of your resources upon death, but you retain special bolts and coins used to upgrade your base and unlock new items. Interestingly, it would help if you remembered that the only way to guarantee you have an item is to buy the weapon or stat boost before a run, which will equip it. However, if you die, you’ll lose it, and the only way to get it back during a run will be to find it randomly popped up in a store for purchase. I’m not sure I liked this implementation, but I will say it makes the game much more challenging.

The platforming and shooting physics of Elsie take some getting used to. It took me almost eight run-ins with the first boss to understand Elsie’s movements and abilities and to use them properly in combat. Elsie has a few base skills across every run, for starters, which can dash, which does count as an attack. However, there aren’t any i-frames for this move. If you want to Parry or Counter, you’ll have to press the left shoulder button before the attack lands to avoid it. Although there is a brief cooldown, I really enjoyed this system. That said, it’s definitely a pain point after it’s introduced, but after some practice and understanding of enemy moves, the action becomes seamless.

Mastering Elsie’s Combat and Boss Fights

Alternatively, Elsie also has a few abilities on cooldowns that require SP to use. These moves can be powerful, but they also have a base level of knowledge to use properly. For example, the default beam locks you in place, and susceptible to damage. Meaning you can’t dodge out of it. Further, simply understanding how drones or spells work comes with time, which is easy to pour into this game. One interesting system is after multiple attempts; the stages do seem to become a bit kinder with the upgrades and loadouts. While this doesn’t make the boss fights any easier, I like that devs want you to succeed. However, the challenge returns tenfold after you beat that boss and head to the next biome.

Elsie blends challenging roguelike gameplay with bullet hell mechanics to create truly chaotic fights.

After entering a stage for the first time, survivability is difficult considering you don’t have access to rest areas, which are called bonfires, but their vending machines. After you die, you can then unlock these rest points using bolts. It keeps you playing at a steady pace. Bolts can also unlock more upgrades from Dr Grey, and meal tickets can be used for special boosts on a run. So, suppose you’re curious about the depth of this roguelike. In that case, I’ll say it has everything genre fans would expect, with a high ceiling for the challenge but options for players to sink time into unlocking items to make the experience more accessible. The bosses are also of significance as they really test your skills. Whether you are playing a stage boss or Guardian, I was very impressed with these enemies’ sheer variety and moveset.

Chaotic Battles with Customization Options

As you can see, there’s a lot to the gameflow and moveset of Elsie. This result leads to some genuinely chaotic and insane moments of fights. During runs, you’ll enter locked areas where you must fight waves of enemies. Depending on your loadout, the sheer insanity of everything happening is impressive to see play out. However, there are a lot of systems in Elsie that I generally just forgot about or didn’t need. For instance, I never relied on SP abilities or utilized the ground pound much. Further, special stages where you have to hit targets for items are made redundant once you unlock Fireflies that hone in on the targets. There are just several cases where one system does the same thing as another, or maybe it just feels half-developed.

Fun Mechanics That Could Use Refinement

Focusing on the most fun aspects of Elsie, the Dodge and Parry action flow with bullet hell projectiles is more than enough to justify playing. There seems to be a lack of budget in some cases when you see the limited menu UI or minimal ways to interact with your base, making me believe that future upgrades to the game are on the way to spread the quality across each aspect of this package. The experience now is a bit messier than I would have liked, but it’s still enjoyable and exciting to see from a systems standpoint. It doesn’t go unnoticed how each weapon is unique and brings a completely new dynamic to the match, which can be said about every aspect of this game, including the magic, food, and boss design.

Elsie is a well-developed roguelike bullet hell. Gamers looking to enjoy a Mega Man X-inspired romp against bosses that would humble any of the series’ greats should play. That said, from a systems standpoint, Elsie is entirely unique. It could use a sequel that takes everything that works but removes the bloated systems that aren’t heavily used. Regardless, Elsie only gets better the more you play it, so that’s what I encourage you to do.