|Non-Spoiler Section|

Zelle is a very... interesting game. It doesn't define itself as a horror experience, instead choosing the term "occult adventure", which is much more generous. However, it does try to create a rather tense atmosphere throughout it's runtime.

This atmosphere never really hit me in the way I had hoped it would. The "scares" were all rather predictable, and though the art is very well done, nothing shown gave me any sense of dread for the situation our protagonist is in. This could just be due to me being intimately antiquated with the horror genre, but I was never shaken by the games' events. I find that games need to give you something within the plot that feels unnatural and tense to achieve the vibe Zelle was going for. However, the premise of "boy goes outside room when he's not supposed to and meets demons" wasn't nearly enough to get me invested.

While the game tries to make some commentaries on sin, heaven, and hell, all it's observations remain surface level, and never dig down to the core of the discussion. Perhaps with a longer runtime this issue could have been mended, but I feel that a longer runtime would also sacrifice player attention-span, with the barebones mechanics of the gameplay not leaving much room to be expanded upon. I wish the gameplay was entirely reworked from what it is, as the shortcomings from this game's tiny length don't end at it's inability to make any greater points.

A major intention of the second half of the game is to try and get you invested in the characters of the world, but again, with such a short runtime it's VERY hard to give any of the characters meaningful dimensions, leading me to not care about what happened to any of them, even our own protagonist. The shift from first to third person that also occurs in the second half is an interesting gimmick, but does absolutely nothing to enhance or change the player experience. The developers seemed to add this feature only so that they could insert short "cutscenes", but with this being made in the RPGMaker engine, all the cutscenes were extremely stiff, and the lack of connection between the player and the characters means I didn't care much for what was occuring in the first place.

|Spoilers|

The boss fight with the reaper (I forget what his real name was because I did not care about him) was the only time in the game the gameplay actually felt slightly tense. However, this tension is INSTANTLY brought down by the fact that directly after, you fight the final boss, which you win with, you guessed it, the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP!!!!........ Without any explanation or reasoning, a little dragon baby turns into a big dragon and finishes off the final boss for you! Yay!?!? This could have MAYBE been a cool moment if it was explained a little??? But even then, AGAIN, it is SO hard to feel any emotion towards any of these characters when they are so two-dimensional and underdeveloped, so a character-driven finale felt EXTREMELY underwhelming.

As someone with a deep love for RPGMaker games (My #1 game on here is one), I really, REALLY wanted to like this game. It has such a unique vibe, but unfortunately that gets ruined by the shift that occurs in the second half, and it never really recovers or expands upon itself in a way that makes the experience memorable. I wouldn't NOT reccomend the game necissarily, as it's runtime doesn't make it a major timesink to be lost, but I would advise expectations to not be too high while playing, and to simply view this as someone's short-and-sweet art project.