Elegy For a Dead World Review

Elegy for a Dead World gives you the space to write. No matter if you are a writer or not

Gameplay

Elegy for the Dead World has three worlds, each having ten prompts you can choose from. From correcting some grammar for practice to telling a speech to your fellow citizens, each prompt takes you on an adventure. Before entering a world, you choose between the prompts, which has the structure of a Mad Libs book. Each varying in input, whether it calls from it in the prompt or you wish to put in more input. “They covered their planet with ____ and created ____” can range in input of entering a few words or adding in more and more till it’s a paragraph or more. It’s structured in a way that you can put as much input you want, and the story will still go on.

Each prompt, you travel through the world, sightseeing as you find the feathers indicating you can write; if you are doing freeform writing you can pick anywhere. Once you wrote in each section, you go to the edge of the world where you can publish, edit, or exit. This is where you see your story on the page, as you don’t travel through the world like you did when you wrote it. Instead each page has the backdrop of where you were with the text. It may have been more interesting if you actually traveled into the planet, with the words fading in as you walk towards them.

The achievements may be the worst thing about Elegy for a Dead World as it goes against what it’s about. Being a reader of fanfiction, I always appreciate the writer as they are not doing it for money but to put something out there. This seems to be the case as well, but focusing on trying to get nonwriters to write. Having achievements to get 1000 upvotes (or commendations) is not only impossible, due to the lack of a playerbase, but can set a wrong impression. Why play Elegy for a Dead World if you can’t possibly get 1000 upvotes? Maybe if the achievements were more towards publishing stories it would be fine.

Art Style

The art in Elegy for a Dead World is amazing. Each world has a different look and color pallet, along with a varying number of enterances you can go into. Each having their own breathtaking areas and backgrounds as you walk through each writing. Your character standing out as you walk or fly through. The area where you choose a world also has a unique color pallete, varying in pink with a bright white light outlining the area. I only wish there were more worlds to explore than three, as there is not much to motivate the player to do more prompts as you see the whole world in one prompt. The scenery doesn’t change with a different prompt, having the player motivate themselves to write rather than exploring and writing.

Sound

Most of the sound is fairly well done as it gives each area it’s own personality. Each having a main sound, which can follow by sounds of rain or hums from objects. Even the area where you choose a world has its own sounds as it has hushed voices talking over one another. The only gripes I have with it is that sometimes the sound isn’t cancelled when you exit out and the sound where you can teleport to a feather is a little too loud.

Performance

Elegy for a Dead World runs really well, having little to no lag. The only problems was the loading speed of both the prompts popping up before you select it and the stories. As you can find yourself waiting for the next pages to load or the pictures of where it was written to load.

Overall

+ Gorgeous art
+ Provides an area for people to write
+ Interesting prompts

+/- Some sounds are too loud

– Limited
– Achievements could have been handled better
– Not much of a player base

Elegy for a Dead World is great for those who like to write, or want to write. If you want a muse to write about, this has three world you can take inspiration from. I would wait for a sale, however, as a $15 price tag may be too steep for what it provides.