It's a Switch exclusive visual novel about an elf named Princess Dam, on a quest with her pet cat/hero-in-training Roland to discover the magic land of Elftopia. Or maybe it's about an elf named Princess Dam trying to impress her best friend Dido with the true story of her life. Or maybe it's about an elf named Dam who pretends to be a princess to scam an elf named Dido into giving her gummy bears.

I usually don't have much interest in playing visual novels for myself, but this one had me hooked. Its visuals are like a collection of action figures laying deep in the uncanny valley, modeled a little too close to realistic. Everything is constantly in motion, from the backgrounds to the characters rotating back and forth like you're switching between two frames of a stereoscopic 3D image.

There's also a "battle system" in play here, as you'll usually end up fighting three enemies per location you visit. You're shown a looping, closeup video of something, and have to infer which element in your arsenal it belongs to. Some of them are very straight forward, but there were a few times where I had to stop and think what they were getting at. It mostly works, but there was a few times where I had to learn through trial and error what the game was trying to get at, and some instances where I never understood why the correct answer was correct. The penalty for getting it wrong is very minor though, and you could always save scum if you really cared (like I did).

The writing is a bit of that "lol random" stuff we all like to look back on and say "ah, how naive we were to ever enjoy this," but if you can check your cynicism at the door I think it's still fun. I thought Roland was a real fun character; he feels like a cat that just happens to be able to talk. He's very blunt and direct about everything he says, which works well as a foil to Princess Dam, who talks like someone trying to flex on their (nonsense) vocabulary. He never seems fully aware of what's happening and doesn't understand many concepts beyond eating, and he's perfectly fine with that. He's just happy to have someone pay attention to him and give him food.

That's a lot of words to say "I like this silly game about an elf." I really wish this was on PC so I could recommend it to more people. It's currently on sale for $3 until December 4th, 2023, and I definitely think it's worth picking up at a price that low.