Elegy is a simple concept executed well: you walk around a beautiful dead world, full of vistas and abandoned structures, and you write what you see. The default writing guides give you a framework to write in (eg. "The first settlement ended because ____"). It gets your ideas going, but it doesn't ever constrain you to a particular story. That's all up to you. Or, you can turn off the writing guide and write freely.

The genius of the game is meticulously designed ambiguity. In both the artwork and the writing guides, there are loads of things to get your mind going, but none of them have an explicit meaning. Like a Rorshach ink blot, everyone will see something different. So you aren't so much writing a story from scratch, as seeing a story unfold in front of you: one that the designers didn't necessarily intend, but that will have meaning to you. By the end of it, if you took the writing task seriously, you will feel like a moving story has been told to you, and then you realise that you told it yourself.

A big part of the game is the sharing and reading experience, and it's also the most flawed. The game lets you share stories in public and read other people's stories. It's fun to see other people's interpretation of the same visuals, but the reading experience is greatly hampered by its presentation: instead of seeing the full scenery to accompany the text, you see one or two small windows of objects in the scene. You see so little that you basically have to remember what you saw when you played it, or the text will often make no sense. The other thing is that the game seems to "score" you based on how many people commended your work, and this suffers the same problem as all user-created content systems: that a few popular stories will rise to the top, while the vast majority will never be read at all. This leaves the dream of reaching the game's stated goal of 1000 commendations well out of reach to most players.

The game is best enjoyed without any expectation of others reading your work, or by comparing stories with a friend. I think it would make an excellent teaching aid for creative writing in the classroom. A highly recommended experience.

ELEGY FOR A DEAD WORLD MIGHT NOT BE FOR EVERYONE! - PLEASE READ AT LEAST THE TL;DR OR WATCH THE VIDEO TO UNDERSTAND THIS REVIEW! THANKS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYlaP0N1BSI
Elegy for a Dead World is not exactly a game in the strictest sense. There is not final goal to achieve, there is no failure state and there are only barebones in terms of its mechanics. Elegy for a Dead World really is more a way to explore your fantasy. More specifically, by offering all kinds of writing prompts and premises for you to bring your ideas into short stories. But let us start from the beginning. You can currently choose between three portals, each with a selection of writing prompts, which range from humorous, like quickly finishing the homework on the way to school, to serious topics, like analysing the downfall of a civilization or the extinction of a race. Additionally, all worlds also offer free form writing, without any prompts at all. Once you selected the basis of your short story, you are thrown into one of the three beautiful worlds. Aesthetically, they remind me of Banner Saga, as the layers of two dimensional artwork slowly pass by while you walk and enjoy the environments. Your character constantly breathes audibly and while it might sound confusing and annoying, it actually is quite atmospheric, especially coupled with the underlying music, that changes depending on where you are in the world and creates an unsettling alien mood. At certain points, a feather asks you to fill in the blanks and thus your story begins. If you so choose, the given writing prompts themselves can also be changed, to alter the story to your liking. I do not consider myself a great writer at all to be quite honest with you, especially in terms of creativity, I always need a nudge in some direction to get going. This is why the formula of Elegy for a Dead World works so well with me. It took me about thirty minutes to go through the first world, writing a short story from the top of my head, and I quite enjoyed reading it again afterwards as well. The quite simple concept of providing writing prompts, combined with audio visual input works wonders in triggering my imagination. Well, at least once for each world, as now I am always thinking of my earlier stories, even with the new writing prompts underneath, and thus I find it hard to grasp new ideas and attach them to the world in the background. Some writing prompts especially seem very disconnected from the world you are exploring.
If you ever feel exhausted of writing yourself, you can just read what others have produced. The attached Steam Workshop makes sharing and reading other stories very easy, however I also find it quite difficult to browse through the massive amount of stories already. As you can only see the title and the first few words in the game, and no sorting or rating options are available in-game, finding interesting reads could be quite tedious in the future. In my honest opinion, the interface and the accessibility of other stories overall should be improved, since a mere list with titles is quite tedious to go through. I would love to be able to sort by views, recommendations and writing prompts used as basis. Ideally this browsing of other stories would use the whole space available on screen instead of just a measly list of a few titles.
Another gripe I have, is that when reading other stories, you only get simulated book pages, instead of the interactive walk through the story experience, which takes away so much of the atmosphere, especially since the pictures in the book cannot be controlled in their shapes, sizes and the like. I understand that when reading through multiple stories on the same portal, it might get very repetitive to go through the world over and over again, however I think that there should be an option to read a story either in the fast, booklet form, or in the exploratory, walking experience.

TL;DR

To sum it all up, Elegy for a Dead World is a truly unique interactive experience that might trigger your imagination towards writing short stories to unknown levels, however it also has problems in terms of its interface and its content overall. Three short worlds with two handfuls of writing prompts each make it a tough sale, if you are not heavily into writing or reading sci-fi already. If you love to sit down and think about stories, while needing a little bump to get going tough, Elegy for a Dead World is probably the best option you can currently get your hands on.

As a writer, sometimes the words don't come to you. Elegy for a Dead World is a game that gives you great visuals and haunting audio. There are so many types of prompts, all of which have helped my creativity flourish. I find myself getting ideas every time I sit down to type a few sentences. Plus, it's worth flying around these dead worlds, exploring and wondering what they are all about.

As a writer and someone who appreciates beauty, I recomend this game as a great and fun way to do some writing exercises and enjoy the scenery along the way.

As a father and an educator, Elegy stoked the interest of both.

I first went through one of the worlds with a writing prompt, and then had my 9 year old daughter do the same. She couldn't really understand mine, but was quite pleased with hers. I enjoyed both.

There are some potential limitations in gameplay replay if there are only the three worlds, which are rather short to play through, but the writing possibilities with the many different prompts available are varied and deep.

I would love to get this into my school, but as in most schools in this era, administrators, (including, ironically, directors of technology) stand as guardians of the status quo and block anything that is not Brainpop, or the like.

In time, I see Elegy and other digital game-based learning becoming commonplace in education. Elegy's merits are clearly superior to the ubiquitious worksheets of today. Any teacher with an open mind should be able to see it.

A game whose sole purpose is making me want to write, which succeeds in its mission. Novel.

• Overall Score: 3/5

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Don't write much sci-fi?
You might, here.

Initially, I saw the game's greatest strength as a weakness, from my perspective as a teacher. Not enough of my kids found the atmosphere particularly appealing, and the prompts/fill-in-the-blanks-style activities, they complained, often pigeonholed them into writing "sci-fi" stories.

I agreed with them. Writing this review fresh out of the game, I still do.

But I don't see how this is entirely negative.

I'm a sci-fi fan, and a writer, but I've seldom actually crossed both. A few of my students have felt similarly, too.

If Elegy for a Dead World as inspired at least one of us - as it has - then, I recommend it.

• In-Game Purchases: None
  
• Learning Curve: Extremely easy
  
• Replayability: High
  
• Recommended Purchase Price: $5

Great writing tool obviously inspired by Ender's Game.

It is not an exploration for it's a memorial visit.

It is not a quest for there is no reward.

There is no fun for the joke was told centuries ago.

1. You mourn everything you imagine;
2. You're alone.
3. If you cry, don't be ashamed. It's your imagination at work.

Note: the game supports Russian language. Just switch to a corresponding keyboard layout.

Made a short story in English, check it out.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=377199495&searchtext=T+is+For+Twenty

I just tried playing this with a bunch of friends using Steam Broadcasting and I must say it's a lot of fun!

Having a group of people to write a story with is an interesting way to bond with others that I haven't done since forced creative projects with others in grade school.

I went in thinking it would just be Mad Libs and we'd put little effort into it.

Skip to 30 minutes later and we're only 3 paragraphs in after lots of discussion and improvements.

Give it a try with some friends and discover your creative side!

A beautiful and fun way to get people to stretch writing muscles they may have ununtentionally neglected for too long...or never knew they had.

Calling Elegy for a Dead World a game isn't quite right in my view. There's no opposition, no story save what you create, and no competition. Rather, it's an exercise in writing. You travel across one of three worlds, all varied, and write. You can either use prompts supplied by the game, or, if you already have your inspiration, you can go without, writing whatever you like. Once you finish, you can put your work online for others to read.

Ultimately, it's a rewarding experience. It probably won't make you enjoy writing if you don't already, but if you like exercising your literary muscles, it's a good way to get some inspiration, put out something others may enjoy, and see what the same images and prompts inspired others to write.

Elegy for a Dead World is basically a themed writing contest. There are different "modes" which ultimately boil down to "caption contest" and "madlibs". If you are someone who enjoys writing, this game might appeal to you. If you are asking, "how is this a game?" Well I would agree it wouldn't be a game up until they added the achievements. There are only three, but they require you to get 1,000 commendations within each themed portal.

So there definitely is a game here. And it's definitely unique. Just one I know for sure I don't have enough skill to compete in.

If you'd like to see my Let's Play of it. You can see it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhizfNtguXM