As it says on the Steam page:
Yeli Orog is a short atmospheric FMV game about an immense
archaeological discovery: A bizarre stone tablet written in the
Celtiberian language found buried underneath an ancient dolmen in
northern Spain. The inscription written on the tablet tells a ghoulish
tale believed to be the Celtiberian origin myth.
You play the role of Johnny Robin, an archaeologist sent to
Asturias, Spain to assist in the recovery of Celtiberian remains. Upon
arrival to Asturias you find yourself unexpectedly transported to an
alien world, experiencing first-hand the terrifying story written on
the ancient tablet.
Near as I can tell this is the first game from a one person
developer. It's cheap, and way more than I could do. FMV brings
something to the table, but overall it is lacking in substance.
The need to play it in a single sitting (i.e. no saving) is different
indeed, but will likely be an immediate downer for many. However the
fact that it is short (my total play clocked in at 84 minutes) and that
once you know what to do you can easily replicate it (I estimate the
direct path through the game would be no more than 30 minutes) means you
can drop out should you want to. Just replay the bits you know and move
on.
More fundamentally, it really isn't very interesting. You get a large
information dump up front, then poke about in a few drab screens inside
a house. Large squiggly arrows will point the way. Once outside, explore
a hillside, with the same arrows helping out.
Assuming you work out how to manipulate the environment, which is one
of the few puzzles, you will go back and forth between this hill and the
house. Your travels will be punctuated by some distinctly filler
sequences involving doing nothing and listening to noises, often with a
black screen. There are some more interesting filler screens visually,
and one where you get told stuff, but they are what they are.
Each screen is largely static, although the FMV aspect means that
curtains are blowing and sea is lapping at the hillside. From each
screen you can rotate left or right by clicking the grey ribbon at each
edge of the screen. Rotate enough times and you are back where you
started. Some screens have an up or down icon, which enables you to move
to a perspective above or below your current one (e.g. you move up or
down the hillside) where you can again rotate to explore the
surroundings.
Part of the environmental manipulation involves dark and not-dark.
Your dark time efforts utilise a torch/lantern, meaning you will have to
paint the screen with your limited illumination to see whether there is
anything to interact with. Which will generally be a squiggly arrow or
very occasionally an obvious object.
About half way through you get a little action sequence, where you
have to vanquish four beasties. This was one of the high points for me,
but I suspect it won't be for others. There is a timed aspect to it, and
its dark so you have to rely on the torch. In essence, you will know
there is something to shoot with the "gun" you pick up given
the escalating soundscape. Find it and shoot it in time, or go insane
and grow horns and try again. Find all four and move on, or start from
the beginning of the sequence if you don't find any one of them in time.
I found the end puzzle particularly opaque. Understanding how the
puzzle works I sorted out; identifying the symbols needed was another
thing entirely. Perhaps your brain works differently to me, and so you
may find this very clever.
The plot was nonsensical (and largely irrelevant) and the game ends
abruptly. There is no spoken word, but a range of noises provide the
soundscape. The whole thing is point and click, and while you find a
very few things, there is no inventory as such.
I played on:
OS: Windows 10, 64 Bit
Processor: Intel i7-6700 4GHz
