Lesson learnt - don't buy the cheapest stamp.

Welcome To Elk feels like the spiritual sequel to two of my favourite games of 2019 Mutazione and Knights and Bikes. They each have other-worldly, idiosyncratic art styles and superb soundtracks. Each in their own way captures the drama, poverty, and tragedy that can strike small, tight-knit communities.

Where Elk differentiates itself is with its mission statement and self-posed challenge. 'How can you use true stories in an ethical way?'

Presenting these biographical stories and interweaving them into a single fictional narrative is the core of the experience. Without spoiling too much, suggestions throughout that there's a great twist or reframing on the horizon are red herrings. This is about using narrative as an experimental vehicle for true stories.

There's nothing cosier than a smiling fire.

And it works! Although, it falls short for me of truly committing it all to one narrative. The true stories (or tall tales - they are not 1:1) are often told thrice. Once within the thread of the main story with the characters you're familiar with, then once more with real FMV of their retelling, then one final time within bottles as first-hand textual accounts. It all at once feels bold yet conservative in how it doesn't commit to any one means of telling the stories.

It feels like a game of two parts, then. By intruding various real world elements into the game world, they undermine the verisimilitude of the characters and place you're trying to get invested in. The story becomes about the meta interruptions on top of the interruptions of tragedy to the protagonist Frigg's life. At one point when Frigg says she has to work one of the characters outright tells her "you know that's not going to happen" as a wink to the player.

So I'm divided on the approach, since I was hoping for more than a simple vehicle. Whilst switching the means of telling these stories very cleverly draws attention to the central question of the ethics of telling stories, the details lost in retelling, what we gain from stories, how invented stories are themselves real in a way, how fundamentally stories are all we have in the end yet don't have to define us, etc; it feels in doing so it reduces Elk to just answering this question. A mixed blessing perhaps. It's certainly not unambitious for it.

Medicinal alcohol.

The stories themselves are engaging and thought-provoking, but I was most drawn to Elk's virtual world. It's packed with astonishing moments. I love the subtleties in its world-building most of all, as they uniquely capture the hardship of island life. Aspects like one resident having to live off squirrels they catch capture the sheer poverty on the post-industry island. The bottles hidden in every corner and the way every day somehow ends with Frigg at the pub just to cope with the day's events shows the rampant alcohol abuse that can occur in such communities. The anarchism with the main antagonist acting with impunity speaks to how an island can be its own separate world to the mainland.

The stories as they're told within the main narrative thread strike the perfect tone - **exposing absurdity and humour in tragedy and death.**The activities you engage with all the residents in and the incredibly varied minigames that accompany them convey the small things that make life worth living despite such absurdity.

As with the aforementioned games, Elk has a beautiful aesthetic. It's designed for readability with only interactables and people infused with colour, but it also nicely reflects the sadness of Elk. The island is clearly decrepit and forgotten, but there is still colour and life in the people in spite of this.

Its cartoon appearance allows the seriousness of its subject matters to throw you off, much like you might be in real life. Death, alcohol addiction, suicide, and threatened rape have to meet a world wherein a penguin pops its head out of a barrel. Elk makes it work and even, as I said, uses it.

Me at a party.

Elk is a unique narrative experiment in telling real-life stories with sensitivity and a dose of dark humour. It's mostly a success on those terms and met its mission statement, but I wish it didn't split its narrative so in the process. Still, Elk captures life like few games can and experiments like few games will. If you're ready for story time, Elk has a few to tell.