Ellisar

[h1] Underwater platformer of your dreams. Save aqua creatures from extinction and you do so by activating shards to disperse poisonous substance that tries to pollute their habitat. Gameplay is a bit slow but relaxing. Creature can take on two shapes, one is bipedal and another for swimming like a manta ray. Overall seems like a nice game but wonky controls and hard to maneuver underwater gliding is too much to handle. Visuals are nice with distinctive scenery. Characters are interesting and game have its charm. Execution a bit buggy sometimes and those controls make it hard to recommend. Still not that bad underwater game. [/h1]

Ellisar is a pleasant, bite-sized 3D platformer with some swimming/flight mechanics, simple but colorful environments, charming species design, and very light puzzling (mostly just pressing buttons). You control a humanoid manta ray-like creature called an "ellisar" with the ability to morph between walking and swimming forms. With the help of "mootles"—small creatures that assist ellisar in flight and later grow into large "whartles"—find a way to fend off a bunch of purple stink clouds that have been poisoning the waters.  Without combat or action-oriented challenges outside of the swimming portions of the game, Ellisar is not particularly challenging or varied, and there are definitely a few odd issues—questionable sound design choices, objects getting visibly culled by your camera position, and swimming controls that take some getting used to—but it's worth checking out if you're in the mood for a free, casual, 70-minute title that actually manages to nail some nice underwater vibes.

Vibrant, stylised and interesting. Filled with platforming, easy puzzles and colourful landscapes, Ellisar was definitely worth playing. Some parts were irritating to get through as you'd have one flap too short, but it is worth the effort. I personally love ocean-themed experiences, and Ellisar was an enjoyable experience. It costs nothing, but you can tell the development team put their heart and soul into making this game.

really cute game Ive replayed it twice. would absolutely reccomend

The absolute terrible platforming motion really bogs the game down, this is a mixed review. I do think the experience is overall enjoyable, but the maneuvering while flapping from one point to the next just shows that the devs were unable to finish this part of the game before releasing. A shame since the atmosphere and level design were really great for a free entry.

Only played this out of massive boredom and wanting a game with achievements that was free. The visuals are nice but the gameplay is unpleasant. I managed to soft-lock myself and had to load game. Due to there being no checkpoints apparently I had to redo all of my progress and was unable to go to the area I soft locked into due to being made to automatically progress and fear of getting stuck again. We are given chances to interact with the turtles but automatically made to move to the next area instead of being able to explore. Swimming / Flying, even when controls are inverted to be easier, is so stupid and difficult to manage and deal with. When instinctively holding forward to move more forward I just screw myself up and unable to move forward. Any options you put gets reset when you close and relaunch the game. There is no clear guidance on where to go, how to do puzzles or anything and I have mostly stumbled through the answer. Visuals sometimes glitched out or lagged which worried me for my PC health especially as the environment glitching out happened seemingly randomly. The achievement, giving back hope, is absolute torture with unclear on how it works.