Yono and the Celestial Elephants

Lets get this clear, this is a game for kids. But overall I've found it enjoyable. Yono and the Celestial Elephants is a top down action rpg puzzle game where you guide an elephant through the world solving various puzzles and doing various quests. The art style is very cute and the controls are tight. While the puzzles are simple they are still satisfying.

This game is surprisingly tricky I can tell you - because it seems like an ordinary puzzle game for children with colorful and cute characters (which is partly true indeed) but it's so much more actually! Not to mention that there are some challenging (and fun) puzzles in the second half of the game. Yono and the Celestial Elephants has surprisingly lots of really interesting topics about life and death, freedom, politics(!), artifical life, responsibility, etc. so get ready to be blown away how smart and mature a game made for kids can be... well... sometimes. For me the most enjoyable part of the game was the human city because of the optional social quests, so I was a little bit disappointed when it turned out the game'd focus on the puzzles and platforming later on. And there are a lot of them which could be tiresome here and there. Another thing is altough the level designs are creative and adorable indeed they don't really make sense sometimes - but I'm not really sure if it's intentional (the prison dungeon levels was almost surreal) or not. Unfortunately the game has a few semi-serious problems what could be a little bit frustrating (some puzzles could be failed and you have to reload the level from the menu) but I don't want to nitpick here. The game was created by almost one person entirely and it has a pure hearth and soul - I definitely recommend you to check it out (especially if you have kids because it's amazingly cute)!

This game consists mainly of puzzles and lore/social encounters. While it is obviously for children, I felt that its cuteness was enough to draw me in for a few hours. There were a few bugs, but nothing game breaking. The biggest downside, in my opinion, is that puzzle sessions are long, then the (mostly optional) social parts are long (and feel mostly like info dump in the end). It would, in my opinion, have been better if social and puzzle alternated more often. Overall, it's great for children, but I wouldn't advise buying it for an adult, at least not at full price.

I was a little borried (although I loved the graphics, athmosphere, etc.), but my niece (who was 7) played this game a lot and really loved it. So this game was great, I was just not the right audience :)