Elementalist demo - E1: 0th Dimension

[00:00:01]Hello, welcome. This is a demo of a game called Elementalist. So, although this is not Celeste, it is closely related because this game was made by the author of Fifth Dimension in the intermediate lobby of Strawberry Gem. And I've been wanting to play it and I think now is the perfect time.

[00:00:18]I've come and poked these settings just a little bit. So, we got interact.

[00:00:23]And I can also press up to do that. It looks like jump where I'd like it.

[00:00:27]Ability probably where I'd like it. undo where I'd like it. Retry is that one.

[00:00:32]That's acceptable.

[00:00:36]That's where I normally put retry, but let's leave it on back for now. Okay, let's try this out. New game.

[00:00:45]Game is uh supposedly coming out kind of soonish. Next few months, it sounds like, but you know, can never be sure about these things. I can jump, I can go left, I can go right. There's 14 of something. Ability does nothing. Undo puts me back there. Reset really puts me back there.

[00:01:04]Okay, so I can steer up to interact.

[00:01:08]Jump on to jump higher and right there's also Okay, so in that case because this is my natural retry button.

[00:01:21]I will swap those two. Okay, works for me. I can retry with that. I can interact with up or select if I really want to. Okay, I won't. Thank you then.

[00:01:33]Adjusting controls. I just did. Mostly satisfied.

[00:01:38]Sun collector. All right, that might be a level that I go into. Oh, I can wall slide, but not while jump. Got no dash yet. We will see.

[00:01:50]Z 00 level pair of glasses. All right.

[00:01:56]Oh no. Stuck in a hole. So I need to undo probably.

[00:02:02]Use the button displayed above your head.

[00:02:06]So that one to reset. All right. I got like a humorous tone to this writing.

[00:02:13]I dig it. All right. So don't get stuck in a hole.

[00:02:18]Go back to hub with that thingy. Sun fragment collected.

[00:02:22]So I will need six to open that. What was on the left? There was another sungate.

[00:02:28]14. Okay, so new level open the water.

[00:02:36]I have three droplets of water. And this is probably what my interact button does. That's what it's telling me there.

[00:02:42]There's my dash. It takes me upwards.

[00:02:44]And I have a spare. Can I take it to the hub?

[00:02:48]Nope.

[00:02:50]Okay. two floating island.

[00:02:55]I don't know how extensive this demo is.

[00:02:56]I'll just play until it runs out, I guess.

[00:03:00]Aha. Okay. So, thanks for clearing that up. Yeah. So, undo in a continuous game like this without like turns is always kind of a weird thing. You got to set the special rules for it for that to make sense.

[00:03:16]Okay, so we got certainly some sort of resource management here.

[00:03:20]If I'm looking at this right, what makes sense is to use this droplet to collect these two.

[00:03:25]Have these two in order to get up here, get a refill there, and then that water droplet takes me here. Very intuitive.

[00:03:32]There's a sign here I'd like to read.

[00:03:36]I sure have. That's right. And I got to read that sign as a bonus.

[00:03:43]This is like vaguely snarky writing.

[00:03:45]Maybe that's just my reading of it, but that is my reading of it.

[00:03:48]It's good. The air. All right. Got some eyeballs that turn into wind. Is that my horizontal dash? Sure is. All right.

[00:04:00]No sign to tell me I fell in a hole. I just have to understand it myself this time. Except I don't even have to cuz I didn't do it. Powers combined.

[00:04:12]Okay. Got wind.

[00:04:16]Oh, okay. We got hints. All right. I'm going to look at one of those as soon as I'm standing there with a sun fragment.

[00:04:23]Ah, so, um, something that this game made very clear is that powers are used in collection order.

[00:04:32]So, I guess I could have, uh, pressed reset instead of walking out and back in, but that's fine. So, dodge, collect water first, collect wind second. Oh, this is cool.

[00:04:45]Dash.

[00:04:47]Other dash. And there we go. What form does a hint take?

[00:04:54]They're tiered.

[00:04:58]Yes. Yes. Okay. So, general mechanic reminder or explainer.

[00:05:07]How? Figure it out or use the last hint.

[00:05:09]What if I do?

[00:05:12]Okay. Yeah. And then the last one spells it out. So like general info you might or might not have info about applying that uh thing you need to know and then just spelling out the solution. That seems like a pretty good way to do that elemental stack.

[00:05:31]Okay. So right and I can just think about I keep seeing these like open sides here and wanting to go somewhere but as you can clearly see by my slide that is a wall.

[00:05:42]Yeah, I see water says up.

[00:05:47]So, looks like I need one wind to cross from up here to up here, then another one to cross from up there to over there. So, I want water, wind, water, wind, right? Unless I'm misreading.

[00:06:00]I'm not misreading, but I am thinking of the wrong order. I want to end up with water, wind, water, wind, which means I need wind, water, wind, water because this is a um a uh a leo last in first out.

[00:06:20]There we go.

[00:06:23]Fragment of the sun.

[00:06:27]There we go. Got six. And the door lowers. Cool. What's this? World one, right? This was world zero distant shore 13 sun fragments two stop signs.

[00:06:41]Uh now right so that's going to be so I currently have six. They're not spent by opening the door.

[00:06:47]So I need um eight more. And in here was how many?

[00:06:55]13. Plenty more than I need.

[00:07:00]World zero put up a forest. Okay. Uh, so there are abilities out in the world here.

[00:07:08]Cool.

[00:07:10]That's a level. That's a level. 20 fragments to open this.

[00:07:16]Why water here? I guess there are going to be levels up here is the reason probably.

[00:07:25]Are there other interesting things I could do with that? Like skipping over this wall. Oh, I shrink down when I reset. Huh?

[00:07:33]Just like collapse into myself in space.

[00:07:37]No, that dash is not nearly good enough for that. If I wasn't going down at the time, like I don't know how much it carries my momentum with it.

[00:07:48]Yeah. Okay, clear enough. Sharp reefs.

[00:07:53]Zero indexed levels here.

[00:07:56]Got it. Are these sharp? They sure are.

[00:07:59]I collapsed into myself again.

[00:08:04]All right, two waters to get wind and then one wind to get back.

[00:08:11]There's some interestingly performed music.

[00:08:16]The instrumentation reminds me of something. I can't quite place it though.

[00:08:22]Trade other.

[00:08:26]It's unconventional in a way that I'm kind of digging. Now, I just went and picked up that water without thinking about what I need.

[00:08:39]All I really need is two wind, don't I?

[00:08:42]But yeah, two wind means Okay, what that means is this. This last in, first out. Should be able to use water to not use wind there. Great.

[00:09:02]Great. Okay. The copy green.

[00:09:12]It's not an ability. These are like little Pac-Man pellets I'm eating or something.

[00:09:19]Oh, I guess my default garb is green.

[00:09:23]My character has a name given in the supporting materials at this game, but I don't remember what it is. Ah, the copy.

[00:09:31]I see. Okay, so copy of last thing collected.

[00:09:37]Do I want two waters or two winds?

[00:09:40]I think two waters sounds more productive. And then a wind after that.

[00:09:45]Okay. Uhuh.

[00:09:49]Good stuff. This is super cool.

[00:09:57]Cave of the reverse thinker.

[00:10:02]Yes, reverse thinker. Got to think in reverse for what it is I will be needing to get out. So when I have the sun fragment, I need wind, then water, then wind.

[00:10:13]Which means on the way in, I want wind, water, wind. So do I really need to reverse all that much? Well, if I can only copy the last one.

[00:10:26]Wait, no. Okay, here I'm not thinking correctly in reverse. I thought in reverse from the Do I have a cursor? I don't. Unfortunate. That's okay. It's still time to fix it. This is my suggestion. I would like to be able to point with a with a cursor on the pause screen. Nope. Move mouse. Nothing happens. That's a that's a thing I always want in every game. I don't have it in Celeste either. And I I do wish that I did.

[00:10:50]Okay. So, right. So, what I did was I thought from where the sun fragment was traveling right to left, I needed wind.

[00:10:58]Then I need water to go up. Then I needed wind to get through there. Then I reversed that in my mind and just said, well, wind, water, wind reverses to wind, water, wind. So therefore, that's what I need on the way in. But no, I can fall and I only need one water.

[00:11:12]So wind Windwood, wind, water, wind is really what I want. Okay. Wind, wind, wind, water, wind.

[00:11:26]No. Wind, wind, water, wind, wind. No.

[00:11:29]Right. Yes. I want that in reverse. I didn't think in reverse. So, wind water wind.

[00:11:37]There we go.

[00:11:40]This feels very on purpose. It's just like putting me into all the cognitive traps just to get me used to what order I'm going to have to think in. And like the the title of that was pretty explicit about that, I feel like. So yeah, my jump goes too high. Too high and a bit extra piece water up to get that. But if I do that, then I'd have nothing to copy. I think I have to waste a copy.

[00:12:09]Okay, so let's think in reverse. If I'm at the sun fragment and trying to go back, one single wind gets me there because I can just fall and go, but I need to climb mid left to upper right. I can't go lower right to upper right.

[00:12:28]So, I do need to use water to get up there. I guess I can take this and copy it since that's the only thing that productively uses the copy.

[00:12:39]Well, but that doesn't work. Wait, there's a wind. There are three winds to the right of me.

[00:12:44]I had a miscounted.

[00:12:49]This is still no good. Okay, so what do I need?

[00:12:56]I need water, wind, wind, wind, and then one more wind at the end. But that's provided past the pit.

[00:13:06]So once I have the sun fragment, if I have nothing and I haven't collected the thing below, then I can just get back easily, right? Let's make sure that works as I expect. Yes. Okay.

[00:13:23]So, wait, how many abilities was that total?

[00:13:26]One, two, three, four.

[00:13:32]Yeah. So, it's fine to waste this. I have to this is everything as it is. Okay, great.

[00:13:43]Works for me.

[00:13:47]Uh 4s. Ooh, let's go into a special.

[00:13:51]Ooh, and there's an A. There wasn't keys. Okay, this is uh splitting off. 4s has my uh my attention. Then I'm going to try the A. Then maybe I'll consider five. Missing piece. I see there's a sign now. Read the sign. So there's an X. Oops, that's not the read button.

[00:14:13]That was the undo button.

[00:14:16]Okay, great.

[00:14:21]Sounds good to me.

[00:14:25]Understood.

[00:14:27]But I mean, I'll at least give it a try first.

[00:14:30]So, same wind on the ground, which seems a little bit superfluous. Maybe that's just the way things worked out. But I have to wonder.

[00:14:41]So, no room for waste here.

[00:14:45]I believe I could cross the first second I believe I could cross the second jump with water.

[00:14:55]What I'm talking about is uh I can't show it easily. Sure, I can. So, right here, I could totally cross this with water. In fact, I can almost cross it with nothing.

[00:15:06]How much coyote time do I have? A lot, but not enough. Ah, are you sure? I haven't hit my limit on that yet.

[00:15:17]What does it look like to hit the limit?

[00:15:19]That Okay.

[00:15:24]Do a super dash. Do a wave dash.

[00:15:29]Not going to happen.

[00:15:32]All right. So, I think that is strictly out of reach. That is sufficient testing to determine that.

[00:15:39]Okay.

[00:15:40]Whoops. That's back to hub. Not what I wanted. Missing piece.

[00:15:46]For a second, I thought that said 145, but no, it was an S, not a five.

[00:15:53]So, all I can do to not waste the copy is this.

[00:15:59]If I did these things, then I think that's pretty obviously no good. Again, not enough coyote time to do such a thing.

[00:16:10]And then I'm just here with nothing.

[00:16:20]Okay, now I can't water up there. I would need to You are like super in the way. Do I somehow still do it despite only having this much? Maybe.

[00:16:45]I don't think so.

[00:16:52]I do not think so. I do note that I can do that and doesn't help me though.

[00:16:59]Nothing over here.

[00:17:04]Okay. I mean, hang on.

[00:17:10]Well, that would make absolutely no sense.

[00:17:20]What would be great as if I could uh Well, now hold on a second. No, that doesn't make any sense.

[00:17:35]Like there's no I can't I probably Oh, I can do that jump.

[00:17:41]That totally means something.

[00:17:48]It's insufficient.

[00:17:50]But it is worth noting that this is a route I can take.

[00:17:56]Yeah, but that's terrible.

[00:18:05]Could it be?

[00:18:07]Oh, it could be. Hold up.

[00:18:16]Check this out. Three waters. Leave the wind. Yo, there we go.

[00:18:23]Okay, that was super cool. All right, they just came to me all at once. No time to explain. Just had to do. All right. Doors and keys 1A. What's an A level?

[00:18:37]I don't know.

[00:18:40]So, new mechanism.

[00:18:43]Do I got to wind my way through it? I do. Okay. So, use an ability. Yeah.

[00:18:47]Okay. I see. So, there's like I guess water, wind, and then that's going to be earth and fire presumably.

[00:18:56]Use whatever you like to open a thing.

[00:19:00]Works for me. And I have water to get out of here. Good stuff.

[00:19:06]Instead of sign explanation by the way of just doing it, I got a sun fragment in there. I did.

[00:19:14]Yes. In charge.

[00:19:19]Okay.

[00:19:22]So, three things have to be elemented through.

[00:19:26]Not necessarily, but if they are, then I have a gentle way back to the hub and I don't need anything extra once I'm at the sun fragment.

[00:19:40]Okay, I mean this is straightforward, right?

[00:19:45]Use this up here and wind is enough to get me there and hit the thing and I can get back just fine. Sure, no problem.

[00:19:54]Right. I got used to S level difficulty, but this is these are other l letters. I guess I won't reach like Well, I mean, I could go all the way to PQRS maybe, but I don't think it'll happen here. Over the ditch.

[00:20:16]Okay, so two there. A uh a thingy way out of the way up there.

[00:20:24]I think what I'm seeing is best done like this.

[00:20:32]I don't know about this, but I'll try it.

[00:20:36]Worked fine. Okay. Didn't think all the way ahead, but it did work out.

[00:20:42]These are pretty quick and breezy.

[00:20:45]Energy conservation.

[00:20:48]All right, so no choices about what to do here, unless I just want to waste an ability, which I probably don't.

[00:20:56]I'm not getting another water. So, if I don't go up there now, then I'm not getting this one.

[00:21:02]Ah, but conservation means do this. Got it.

[00:21:09]And it also means do it earlier. Got it.

[00:21:13]Um, maybe not quite like that.

[00:21:29]How close can I get?

[00:21:35]Not close enough to activate.

[00:21:41]Um, maybe I don't need to. Oh, I do.

[00:21:43]Whoops. Uh, whoops. Can't undo a reset, by the way. I can uh undo now just teleports me back there. Feels like I'm supposed to go farther.

[00:21:57]Feels like, but maybe not actually.

[00:21:59]Well, yeah. Where's my wind now?

[00:22:07]Something's still missing.

[00:22:10]Like, can I like hold this and go longer?

[00:22:19]holding the um Can I No, I just Whatever I do, that's not going to count.

[00:22:29]Okay.

[00:22:32]Well, I have to water up here. I have to wind for you.

[00:22:36]I mean, I could just choose to do this, but that's not jumpable.

[00:22:41]Out of reach. Out of reach.

[00:22:46]So, one of these has to be used on that, but it's out of reach. Like, I just do not make it.

[00:23:00]Oops.

[00:23:04]This no h seems weird. Like this is this the trick it wants me to key into. It feels like Wait, how do I still have wind left?

[00:23:22]Because I didn't waste one earlier.

[00:23:25]Oh, yeah. I was wasting one by accident.

[00:23:27]Okay, got it. I think.

[00:23:32]Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I All right. I think I like combined a failed attempt to do one thing with Well, that's not good enough, right? But what I actually want is not to switch that cuz I could do this jump and just use the wind. There we go.

[00:23:46]Okay, that one was significantly trickier, but I think I just tripped up on all the things I could trip up on.

[00:23:52]Well, that's what made it trickier.

[00:23:55]E, this feels like a natural conclusion to that assassin.

[00:24:04]Okay, will I understand why it's called assassin at the end? Maybe.

[00:24:12]So, water and then some element for upper left.

[00:24:17]I do need to do all four cuz the sun fragment is locked behind them and there are five total.

[00:24:25]So the one to the right of this door can be the last one that I do once I'm in that pit. So I get to waste one ability.

[00:24:37]I think I see what's happening.

[00:24:44]Well, I'm not so sure now. Wait, I did this definitely wrong. All right, I want to at least not pick that one up.

[00:24:51]I don't think that's going to be sufficient, but I might be wrong.

[00:24:55]So, I use water here, wind there, pick up this wind, and use it on this.

[00:25:03]Get the water out of there. And no way, that's not even close. So, hang on.

[00:25:07]Where were my wastes?

[00:25:09]So, this didn't activate anything.

[00:25:12]And then this didn't activate anything.

[00:25:19]Ah, but that's okay. I don't need one to one because I can do two at once. There we go. All right.

[00:25:26]That that time was me just blundering into the right thing. But I will take that, too. Okay. I have 16 sun fragments. One, I can open this. Another I can open the thing back in world zero.

[00:25:38]And there's also more to do here at five. Is this just the end of the whole chain here? Okay. Well, let's do five since that does seem to be the natural end of this sand castle. I see. I am in a sand castle. All right. No choices there. Can I jump this? No.

[00:25:59]Okay. Now, I'm going to have to get back.

[00:26:02]So, that's mostly to set up.

[00:26:07]Okay. Okay, I'm going to want two wind at the end. Therefore, I'll take three water now.

[00:26:15]Well, three water after those winds.

[00:26:19]That's one more water than I needed. I need one at the very end. Okay. Oh, how's that going to happen?

[00:26:28]Wait, cuz yeah, I can't do this jump. I need a water at the end.

[00:26:35]Okay.

[00:26:39]Yeah, that's just to show me you need two wins at the end, buddy.

[00:26:48]Oh, I see it, though.

[00:26:53]Well, no. It's simpler than that, isn't it? Well, sort of. I mean, again, I don't have to do everything at once.

[00:27:00]Just take two. Leave everything here.

[00:27:03]Use the waters. I still need a water.

[00:27:06]No, take three. Use two.

[00:27:11]Put it at the back of the queue. Take two winds. There we go. All right. It's as straightforward as it looks. It's just that you have to look at it from the right angle to see what the straightforward part is. Okay, there we go. Got that whole level set done. So, now I need to go backwards somewhere to get to 20.

[00:27:30]All right, that is a satisfying break point. There's a 26 gate here. There's a sign. Let's read it. Left side of the forest. I have not. That has been on my mind. That is the next place I plan to go.

[00:27:43]I don't know what the red Oh, I only have one red. Uh there's one more red and two more yellows there. Okay. Oh, this is super cool. All right.

[00:27:54]Um, yeah. I don't usually play game demos, but the timing of this was just right. And it sounds like the full game is going to come out sometime in the not too distant future. So, we can maybe pick it up from there in a few months if things stay on schedule. If not, then it can happen later, maybe. All right. See you next time to see what's on offer in Left Side of Forest.