All you have to do is create a safe path for Lily and she’ll do the rest. Its immersion breaking, sure, but it beats having to worry about an AI controlled character messing up. Lily, who tags along throughout the game, is a sort of invisible second character that can’t really be seen even if she’s standing right next to a guard. Now, before you run for the hills I should also make mention that this is not your standard escort mission scenario where you have to tell the other character to hide in a garbage bin so that the crazy infected villagers don’t find them. Now, this does make things incredibly easy as well, but the difficulty ties in with the fact that the game is one big escort mission. Sure, it seems cheap at first, but I appreciated the pacing it provides and it allowed me to try out different tactics without the fear that I would have to restart the entire level. You can leisurely scout out enemies while time is frozen and should you make a mistake you can instantly rewind time. In Shadwen however, all of that is thrown out of the window. It can be stressful at times, especially when a tiny mistake can ruin everything. You formulate a plan of action, scout the area and execute as stealthily as you possibly can. Stealth games usually require a level of finesse and foresight from the player. It’s an odd inclusion for this kind of game as it completely destroys any stress that usually accompanies the stealth genre, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The second big mechanic is the ability to rewind time at will without any usage cap. You’ll still have the ability to control the camera, which allows you to easily plan your next move. Firstly, time will only move when you move, meaning that if you’re not actively controlling Shadwen then time will be completely frozen. The goal for each level never really changes, but how you accomplish your objective is where the game’s two most notable features come in to play. At its core, it’s a stealth game in which you have to get from point A to B without getting seen. Shadwen is an interesting blend of different mechanics. The story is also affected by your actions, but I’ll touch on that a bit later on. It’s far from engaging, but it gets the job done in terms of providing some basic character and world building. During the loading screen between levels, the two will chat to each other and you get to learn more about each character’s backstory. The two cross paths early on in the game and Lily decides to accompany Shadwen even though she is on a dangerous mission to assassinate a king. The story revolves around two characters, the assassin Shadwen and a little orphan named Lily. From the onset, this game seems to have carried over a lot of Trine’s quirkiness and penchant for physics based activities, unfortunately, I wished it carried it over Trine’s ability to be a good game. I was interested to see how they would transition from an action puzzle platformer to a stealth game.
Shadwen was created by the same folks that gave us Trine which was a sort of spiritual successor to The Lost Vikings.
0 kommentar(er)
