Elypse

I have a soft spot for games that build an entire emotional world out of silhouettes and silence, and Elypse, from the small French studio Hot Chili Games, is exactly that kind of game. You play as Fay, a young woman thrown into an underworld called the Abyss as her people's ritual sacrifice - the kind of premise that could easily tip into melodrama but instead stays quiet, symbolic, and genuinely unsettling. The movement is the headline. Wall-jumps, aerial dashes, and chain-linked traversal form the beating heart of the experience, and when it clicks it feels close to the rhythm of Celeste - momentum-driven and precise, where a well-executed sequence of jumps feels earned rather than accidental. The combat leans on a dash-and-slash system built around something called the Celestial Pulse, a mechanic that doubles as both your offensive tool and your main mobility option. It takes a little time to internalize, but once the two functions start feeling like one muscle memory, the boss encounters open up in satisfying ways. The overall structure is Metroidvania-lite: there is light exploration and an unlockable skill tree, but the game is really about traversal challenges rather than map conquest. The visual identity is where Elypse earns the most goodwill. Hand-drawn, silhouette-heavy environments in a muted Gothic palette move through distinct biomes inside the Abyss - dripping caves, crumbling ruins, organic landscapes that pulse with something alive and wrong. The animation on Fay in particular has a genuine elegance to it, and the transitions between zones are handled with care. The orchestral soundtrack by Maxime Engel sits underneath all of it like a slow tide: present, never overbearing, occasionally unsettling in exactly the right places. Ambient whispers and environmental groans do real work here. This is a game that knows how to use quiet. Where Elypse stumbles is in the places you might predict. The narrative is told almost entirely through environmental cues and sparse dialogue, which works as atmosphere but leaves the story feeling more gestured at than fully resolved. The difficulty spike in later stages is real and occasionally abrupt, though generous checkpointing keeps frustration manageable. The bigger caveat is runtime: HowLongToBeat data puts the main story at roughly four and a half hours, and once that's done, the replay hooks - collectibles, hidden rooms, speedrun potential - are thin unless you're a completionist by nature. It is a short game that knows it is a short game, and mostly respects that contract. Mostly. For players who want something in the register of Hollow Knight or Ori but shorter, quieter, and with no interest in padding its runtime, Elypse is worth the descent. It is a debut-era game from a studio still finding its edges, but the craft in the sound design, the movement feel, and the art direction is real and specific. That counts for a lot.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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