Description

Story and setting

You play as Frigg, a young carpenter traveling to Elk for an apprenticeship. She is used to an outgoing and hectic lifestyle in the city. How will she handle the isolated life on Elk with only few young people around her and no internet?

On Elk, Frigg and you will meet the weird and wonderful characters – people whom the world has either ignored or forgotten. Follow their ups and downs, their odd drinking rituals and their unique ways of tackling whatever life throws at them. Here it’s known that humour, love and death go hand in hand. Life may seem hard sometimes, but it is always followed by laughter.

We value the importance of storytellers, those who carry the tales of others and share them. That’s why, in Elk, you will also meet the living storytellers who inspired us to make this game.

Features

• A narrative game based on tales of real stories told by real people.
• Mini games that are deeply connected to the game and story.
• An endearing and lovable cast of characters to explore.
• Humorous and beautiful hand drawn artstyle.

The team

Triple Topping is an indie game studio based in Denmark, focused on making games with unique stories and fun art styles. Founded in 2017 by Astrid Refstrup and Simon Stålhandske, Triple Topping have released Spitkiss (2018), Ynglet (2021) and Welcome to Elk (2020).

With a love of minigames, strong narratives, and feminist storytelling, we believe in diversity and inclusion and work-life balance.

Long before Simon and Astrid founded Triple Topping they worked on Welcome to Elk together for Astrid’s BA project. When Murray joined Triple Topping his humoristic art style and good sense for storytelling was added to the game.

Triple Topping in 2019 signed with Kowloon Nights to develop and release Welcome to Elk, and received support from the Danish Game Scheme for the development of Welcome To Elk in 2018.

Awards

• Best Story – Indie Arena Booth Gamescom 2019
• Most Creative Game – PLAY! Hamburg 2019

Press and Mentions

• Lemonde.fr: Gamescom : dix titres qui nous ont marqués au Salon du jeu vidéo de Cologne: “Elk, c’est ça : un voyage délirant, psychédélique même, au cœur d’une Scandinavie fantasmée, hantée par ses légendes urbaines et ses histoires les plus bizarres.”
• Welcome To Last Week: Die besten Indie Games der Gamescom 2019 “Zudem aufgebrochen von amüsanten Minigames, liebevollen musikalischen Inszenierungen und charmanten Charakteren.”
• Get Indie Gaming: The Best 30 Indie Games at Gamescom 2019
• Edge Magezine September 2019: Knowledge: double plage spread about our art direction
• Adventure Gamers: Gamescom 2019 round-up: Part 2 “The demo certainly is a rollercoaster of emotions: one minute you’re playing a silly minigame sticking cut-out faces onto balloons or trying to pour the perfect pint, the next you’re having to sing one last song for your Dad before he gets shot in the head by a pair of gangsters.”
• Soundrelmedia.com: INDIE GAME PREVIEW: Welcome To Elk “Welcome to Elk is a game unlike any other and defies simple comparisons. It’s a comical jaunt into an abstract cartoon-like world that already has a strong sense of self.”
• Eurogamer: Welcome to Elk seems funny, sweet, surprising and devastating “I think these layers are what makes it so interesting. It’s a demo built around a second-hand story that was itself second-hand. So many layers of memory and interpretation in there, so much fuzziness and imprecision. The stark parts of the story get starker and everything else gets vaguer. It’s funny and horrible and genuinely dark – and it’s memorable too.”
• Rock Paper Shot Gun: 5 Hidden Gems That Dazzled Us At EGX2019
• Polygon:20 weird and wunderfull indie games for 2020 “The stories are based on real-life events, some of which are emotionally searing and morally perplexing.”
• Gamespack: https://www.gamerspack.com/2019/08/20/welcome-to-elk-gamescom-2019/ “The best way I can describe the experience of playing Elk is “colorful melancholy.” It’s sad, whimsical, cheery, silly and deadly serious all at the same time.”
• Nintendeal:  https://nintendeal.com/news/welcome-to-elk-hands-on-impressions-at-pax-east-2020/ “After this, the demo concluded, and I was forced to hold back tears. Welcome To Elk is going to be a bombshell once the dozens of stories are told through this medium and I cannot wait to see what else is in store, even if it stays that dark and devastating to hear.”
• Arstechnica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/03/the-ars-13-our-top-indie-game-picks-from-pax-east-2020/ “The juxtaposition of Welcome to Elk’s gameplay with a video recording of a man telling the true story about another man murdered in front of his wife and child is chilling; I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. Sometimes, in the face of unimaginable tragedy, the only thing you can do is laugh, and Welcome to Elk absolutely nails this absurd feeling.”
  
• GoombaStomp: https://goombastomp.com/steam-game-festival/ “Welcome to Elk was the most pleasant of surprises. An adventure game with stellar and relatable writing.”
• GamesIndustryBiz.com: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-04-10-dreams-drinks-and-ddt “It comes down to what humans do,” Refstrup says. “We sit around the bonfire and tell each other stories. I love when people are telling me a good story. It sticks with you. That’s why we watch movies. We like this kind of entertainment, and putting it in video games and taking it very seriously is just expanding all of that.”
• Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattpaprocki/2020/04/10/welcome-to-elk/amp/ : “There’s a method to the storytelling process. “In cases of stories with a real seriousness, we retell them one-for-one, how it was told to us. However the fun anecdotes can be stretched and moulded to fit the setting of the storyworld we’ve built, allowing us to play with the idea of tall tales and the nature of storytelling itself,” writes Rufstrup.”
• Indie-Hive https://indie-hive.com/welcome-to-elk/ “A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.” – Stephen King”