One of the very first indie games I ever reviewed on this site, back when it was basically a glorified blog, was The Adventures of Elena Temple. It was a cool indie platformer, with a real old school sensibility and clever, faux-retro computer and console aesthetic.

I also checked out the first game’s Definitive Edition, which was, and still is, well worth a look.

Now we have pseudo-sequel The Fall of Elena Temple; a cleverly self-referential name for an extremely clever game. This time, instead of a selection of fake machines, the action takes place on a Playdate console, as the game was –  as I understand it – l originally a Playdate exclusive. As was the case in the previous Elena Temple game, you can zoom in and out of the console the game is playing on, which is a neat, if slightly unnecessary, touch.

In The Fall of Elena Temple, you’re tasked with getting the little heroine from her starting position to the exit; however, it’s locked until you’ve collected all of the coins in a stage. Elena can safely drop any distance, as long as she doesn’t land on anything deadly (such as spikes), but can only jump upwards a small amount, and isn’t very agile in terms of her movement, so collecting all of the coins can prove challenging.

Especially as collecting all of them will generally require an item which allows you to teleport back to a previous position, with some stages allowing you to jump multiple steps back in time. The clever twist is that, even when you do this, the coins you’ve collected remain in your possession, so you can get yourself in a position where you can collect coins from seemingly inescapable places, then hop back to a prior position.

Each step you move is helpfully numbered, so you can see and judge perfectly exactly how far you can hop backwards at any given time. It’s incredibly addictive and compelling.

Though there are only 20 levels, and it won’t take long to complete them all, developer GrimTalin keeps throwing new twists at the player, right up until the end of the game. In fact, not only does the game not outstay its welcome, but it also leaves you wanting much more.

These days, with so much bloat and busywork in so many games, it’s often a relief to finish them; that’s certainly not the case with The Fall of Elena Temple; one can only hope that a Definitive Edition, with more content, is on the way for this particular Elena Temple title too!

It’s a fantastic game from a reliable and inventive developer, and it’s incredibly cheap to pick up too. Available on Xbox, Switch, PlayStation, PC and, yes, Playdate, The Fall of Elena Temple is a short, sweet and clever platform puzzle game which ends just a little too soon.