Quick Review: Ellipsis

Created by Salmi Games, Ellipsis, released to Steam on January 25th, 2017, is described on the store page as an Avoid ‘Em Up.

I barely need to say more, really; that says everything. Still, to fill out a full review, I can say it’s a puzzle/action game in which you control a circle around the screen. Obstacles appear, color-coded; walls, deadly lasers and enemies, boxes and so on. With the mouse, carry the circle around, avoiding the murderous shapes and ships.

The picture is forming.

Collect circles, avoiod ships.
Sounds simple. It gets hard real quick.

Blue circles appear on the screen, each one containing one more dot than the previous one. Your task is to collect the first four, and then enter the portal that appears. Upon hitting a circle, it vanishes and the dots it contains may fly off – it’s in your best interest to gather them all. When the portal appears, so does a fifth and final circle, with (of course) five dots inside of it. You can play safe and head into the portal, or take risks and collect those dots as well. Do note that the area’s dangers increase with each circle reached, so it can be difficult to get the final one before getting into the portal.

At the end of a level, the game counts how many dots you gathered, and you get a score in stars, with 5 dots per star as well as a completion bonus. Sometimes, a level will include a timer, a green line on top of the screen; beating that level quickly will reward you with more dots. In those levels (and in the others as well, I’m sure), it’s possible to reach a top score of 5 stars by also collecting all of the timer dots.

Attack towers now?
Come on, that's noithing yet.

At any moment, you can come back to the map screen to see the beautiful, large image that forms as your circle is, apparently, trying to sneak into a castle and being forced to make a long detour around to reach its goal. I love how later levels play around with mechanics, such as having switches that activate things around a screen, or the goalposts appears and it’s moving along to the obstacles… There’s even a few bosses in there, too! They can be destroyed by passing close to blue explosive obstacles. For those who are interested, there's also a level editor!

This is getting along great! The last levels must be torture.

I don’t know if I’m ever going to finish it, but I enjoyed what I’ve played so far. The style is minimalist, abstract even, and there’s no music either, so the focus is on the gameplay. Over 150 levels, with small changes to the gameplay between sections. It’s a pretty good game. Look for it on Steam for 9.99$.