There is always something special about artists taking what they loved about the classics, adopting it, and making it their own. Taking what’s “old” in terms of visual styles and gameplay, and creating something new with it. I will never tire of pixelated games that reminds of the past, yet a game that new comers to the genre can also appreciate.

Elementallis is a very Zelda-inspired top-down action adventure game by AnKae games. It features real-time combat as you travel the world of Elregir. Each of the eight biomes is governed by an element, and you will fight enemies using these elements, all while seeing this dying world brought back to life through your quest of redemption. 

The Past & Present – Fixing Other People’s Problems

Elementallis takes place in the world of Elregir. It has a total of eight biomes, each governed by their respective elements: fire, water, ice, earth, nature, electricity, wind, and aether. It’s a world that used to be filled with elementals that assisted the people in the world. However, due to certain circumstances, which you’ll find out as you play, they’ve all disappeared leaving the world in an unsustainable chaos. All the while, everything is blamed on the Elementalists, the people that controlled the elementals. 

Your character will journey to redeem the people’s perception of the Elementalists by helping them with their troubles and reconnecting the world with elementals once again. You’ll meet many interesting NPCs, each with their own stories. 

The Open World – Beautiful, Alive, Varied, and a Great Vibe

Elementallis is an “open world” game that restricts progress based on what abilities you have. As soon as you start your adventure, which is in the middle of the map, you can literally go in any direction, with not much that tells you where to go. While it presents itself as a non-linear game, it is actually a very linear narrative. You have no choice but to progress the story in a specific order. There isn’t anything that will directly tell you what to do next (no quest log, journal, conversation history, etc), but if you pay attention, it’s quite simple. 

This can potentially make progressing a bit of a challenge, especially in a situation where you put the game down for several days or play multiple games at a time. There are points in the game where you have to complete a set of tasks for NPCs, and if you didn’t read it properly or have forgotten what they said, you might not know what to do next, especially because they don’t always repeat what they want from you.

Speaking of repeating, this is the type of game that will want you to revisit previous locations after every new element that you receive. It’s integral that you do so, as the game will be too difficult otherwise. Stuff like this is a staple in this genre, similar to a metroidvania. 

What makes traversing over places often more enjoyable, however, is a great soundtrack. Each location sounds good and provides each biome an appropriate sounding BGM. As someone who often idles, I found myself turning up the volume while I left the game on in between gameplay sessions (especially in the desert area). They also made simple, yet crisp and satisfying sounds effect to breaking things like pots, grass, and crystals that are littered all over the world.

Traversal – a Big Win, but Several (HUGE) Rooms for Improvement

Exploring the world of Elementallis is perhaps both one of my favourite parts, as well as one of my only complaints about the game. Using the elements, completing puzzles, and figuring out how to get from point A to point B is very fun in Elementallis. 

The world is beautiful and fun to traverse. So much so, that I didn’t mind going back to them to look for new areas I could explore whenever I got new powers. I’m used to it, as a lover of metroidvanias. It’s my jam. However, there are so many things I wish were better. 

My number one complaint for Elementallis are its horrendously placed Teleport altars. Not only that, you can only teleport to a location using another altar (for 85% of the game). They are placed in the weirdest of places, in the middle of nothing. It almost feels like they were trying to hide them! To be fair, I feel they are placed where they are so that they are slightly bordering adjacent biomes. However, there’s so many obstacles in order to reach them, requiring us to zig and zag, makes it so time consuming and inconvenient, that it’s often better to just walk to your destination yourself. Typically, the more you progress in the game, the more freedom you get in traversal. While still true here, such as getting the ability to “walk on water” etc, there are still some annoying obstacles. Lastly, the ability to teleport from anywhere is gated by a relatively late game collectible, not through story progression. Which is unfortunate and unusual, because many people may never get it unless they look up a guide or just decided to be a completionist. In my humble opinion, we should get it upon discovering all the altars, or buying the final map, or at the very least (and would be relatively lore appropriate), upon receiving the final element’s power.

Number two complaint: too many pebbles (or other itty bitty things) I can’t walk past. Another traversal ability you’ll receive is being able to destroy rocks using the smash ability received from the earth elemental. Fantastic! Now, why can’t it affect tiny little pebbles?! A straight path blocked by an annoyingly placed pebble now becomes a trek up a vine, into a cave, out the other side, and down another vine. Something that could’ve been completed in 1 second if only that pebble wasn’t present. Now, I understand, this is a carefully curated linear world. However, as a reward for completing an area, allowing me to destroy much bigger rocks, can I also please destroy itty bitty pebbles?

Ok, the fact that I spent two paragraphs talking about the things I disliked about the traversal of the world, must mean that I must’ve really hated my time with it, right?! Not at all! With how good everything else is, these things that grind my gears are insignificant overall. It only really started presenting itself towards the end of the game as I tried to look for collectibles, as I like to do when it comes to metroidvanias. 

A Dummy’s Guide to Elements – TLDR: Elements are Awesome to Play With

A game called Elementallis where you play as a budding Avata–Elementalist, means we get to play with elements! There are eight in total. How they interact with enemies, yourself, and how you use them within the world varies based on what you’re using. For example, the first one you’ll get is Fire. Using fire will shoot out a fire projectile and burn anything it touches as well as light torches allowing you to see in the dark. Against enemies, it’ll have initial damage as well as leave enemies with damage over time. In the world, you use it to burn thorny vines and other plant life. Lastly, just having the fire elemental following you around will give you a passive light source in your immediate vicinity.

The way the elements work and interact with your world and enemies are fantastic; it just makes sense! When you leave puddles in the ground when your water bubble bursts, and you cast lightning onto it, it will electrocute the surface, damaging you and any enemies on it. While you have your water bubble on, any fire slime that attacks you will get hurt. Planting your area of effect HP-draining-plant-thing and “watering it” will make it grow taller, increasing its potency. Each of these elements have interesting and creative usage and are easy to use through a radial menu.

While fire is definitely the most dominant element in terms of the way it affects the world, each element is a joy to use in order to traverse, solve the myriad of puzzles, and destroy the monsters that get in your way.

Sword on the Left, Shield on the Right, and the Power of Elements – Let Me Use More Buttons

Elementallis’ look, traversal, and overall combat gameplay should remind you of A Link to the Past. It isn’t shy of it, and that’s a good thing! I love playing games that reminds me of games I love, but with a new twist. What our character is lacking in terms of swordsmanship and usage of tools to fight enemies, our access to the elements more than makes up for it. 

I don’t want to go into too much detail as to what your elements will do, as that’s part of the fun. What I do want to say is that, much like A Link to the Past, these elements will be integral to solve the puzzles of how to kill enemies. You need to use them, often. Once you get more elements, you’ll need to switch between them often as some bosses require you to. R1 (on the Dualsense) will bring up the elemental radial menu. You can also assign L3 and R3 to specific ones allowing for quicker access. You’ll need to do this, as you’ll be in dungeons or boss battles that will definitely require you to use specific ones and switch between them often. 

While those two quick buttons and radial menu is great, there are so many buttons that do almost nothing and over reliance on main menus. Contextual usage of buttons is important to me. While not something that I would take points away for, if there’s a chance to take away repetitive actions, I would welcome it. 

For example: the directional buttons move your character. While it’s great to be able to use that to move, the analog does a better job of diagonal precision controls.

L2 does nothing all together.  Shield usage could go to L2 and L1 could open up a radial menu for items instead of needing to open the main menu to use items.

The Circle button is only used for cancel. Which can be contextual for closing the main menu. It would be great if I didn’t need to switch to Wind element every time I wanted to dash. 

And speaking of contextual actions, activating vines with nature and walking on water with the water elemental should happen automatically or least get a prompt to use it when the time comes; without needing to open the radial to choose it. 

I want to reiterate, that these are not enjoyment breaking things. They are just user experience, quality of life improvement things that, in my opinion, would make the game feel more polished.

Bosses, Baddies, and Their Homes – a Fun Puzzle to Solve

The gameplay loop for Elementallis is as follows: get to a new biome, visit the main village, find out what’s wrong, and head to the temple. Once there, solve puzzles, find keys to challenge the mini boss, get a shiny new element, get boss key, and finally, fight the boss. This gameplay loop is great as it provides you with a familiar idea of what to do, without the need of a journal or hints. Also, getting to the temple and solving it is great as each one is unique and makes good use of previous elements and introduces what your new element could do once you get it.

Using the elements on the variety of enemies is also fun. They are biome appropriate and the way they interact with the elements is fantastic. There are standard enemies like slimes (which is the only real enemy type that repeats), however enemies like the Ice Penguins react interestingly to fire and earth.

While not too difficult, the boss battles are one of the highlights of Elementallis. The bosses and the encounters have all have fun relationship with the rooms they are in. It will never be as simple as pew-pewing or slashing and poking them to death. I typically don’t care about spoilers when it comes to seeing boss fights, especially for action adventure games, but for Elementallis, figuring out how to effectively defeat them is part of the fun and is best discovered on your own.

A Satisfying Finish

Elementallis is a game that pays homage and draws inspiration from an iconic series many gamers love – Zelda. They do this by successfully applying the gameplay mechanics that made us love this top-down, action adventure genre. Elementallis is a game about redemption; a story of taking a link of the past, accepting all that it has to offer, and using it to make a fantastic game to call their own. Apart from some questionable quality of life designs, Elementallis was truly a joy to play. An homage to the past that everyone should experience.

Elementallis was reviewed on PS5. Gamer Social Club would like to thank the Devs and publisher for the code.

The game launches on the 28th of April 2026. It will be available on PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One.