Developer: Frozenbyte
Publisher: Frozenbyte
Rrp: £12.99 (Gog.com, Humblebundle and Steam)
Released: 17th May 2016
Available on: Gog.com, Humblebundle and Steam
Played Using: Mouse and Keyboard
Approximate game length: 10 hours
When you decided to infiltrate the castle you hadn’t expected to gain yourself a follower. You can’t seem to dissuade her and well… she reminds you a little of yourself. So you take her with you, she seems to know how to stay hidden, so at least there’s that.
Shadwen is a third person stealth game, or what I’ve recently started to call a ‘hardcore stealth’ game. A hardcore stealth game is game that focuses almost entirely on the stealth gameplay rather than action as many titles within the stealth genre do. You play as the titular Shadwen, who is a woman on a mission to infiltrate the castle and do… something to the king. I say “do something” because that part is left to the player to decide.
The game starts you off with a basic tutorial on being stealthy, how to use your grappling hook and the time stopping mechanic. Yes that’s right this game has a time stopping mechanic, specifically its one that works in a similar way to Superhot. Time Stops moving when you do, or to be more accurate, as long as you don’t press anything (apart from moving the mouse) time stands still, this includes when you’re falling allowing you time to try and find a good spot to attach your grappling hook. You can advance time while not moving by holding down [Q], useful for when you’re waiting for a guard to turn their back from where you’re hiding.
Along with the time stopping mechanic there is also one that allows you to rewind time similar to that of Prince of Persia, however unlike Prince of Persia you can rewind as long as you like until you reach the start of the level. I really like the rewind mechanic because one of the most frustrating things about stealth games is that having to reload when you mess up, this rewind mechanic avoids that feeling of frustration.
Both the time stopping and rewinding mechanics are not diegetic to the game, they were implemented simply to make the stealth (and failure thereof) less punishing, not as a plot device.
As I mentioned in the intro very early on in the game Shadwen gains a follower, a young girl by the name of Lily (and before you ask, no Shadwen can’t hurt her or leave her behind). She will follow you as best she can while you’re on your mission, moving from one hiding spot to the next. However she won’t progress if she has to pass through a guards field of view, this is where you come in having to either dispose of the guard or distract them so she can make a break for the next bit of cover. What I would do is at the start of a level scout ahead of her and finding where the exit to the level was so that I could make a plan of action, occasionally when I did this I’d be part way on my return trip only to be surprised to discover that she had already been making her way towards where I was. You do have some limited control over Lily in that you can command her to hide in a specific hiding spot, of course if Lily thinks she can’t make it she won’t move.
Once you’ve completed the tutorial Shadwen will only have a grappling hook and a dagger at her disposal. You’ll be able to attain more tools through finding schematics and parts in chests. With these you can create several single use items to help you, however the grappling hook will be the single most used and versatile tool you’ll have. With it you’ll reach places in the levels where you can perch and view your surroundings similar to that of a certain resident Gotham City. Along side that you can use it to move objects which will distract the guards, it’s also extremely good for traversing the levels as well, so long as there is something made of wood for you to latch to.
The game doesn’t have difficulty settings in the traditional manner of ‘easy, normal and hard’ instead it prefers to allow the player to turn off and on a few options at will within a difficulty setting menu.
By default the guards field of view isn’t shown (leaving you to have to guess it somewhat) this is one of the options you can change within the difficulty settings menu.
Unfortunately this game does have quite a few flaws. The first and foremost being that there is very little variation on the guards. They are extremely copy pasted right down to their voices. I wasn’t expecting to get a rich and detailed backstory on every guard but having one or two that were unique would have been nice.
The game also has a bit of ‘eurojank’ that peeks through the most obvious example of this being the animation on the guards can start to twitch and bug out if they get too close to a wall. Also for some reason they all walk like they just shit themselves.
Dialog between Shadwen and Lily only occurs in cutscenes and will change depending on if Lily has seen you kill someone or finds a body.
Putting it simply this is a game for the person who wants a pure stealth game and can deal with guards who all look and sound the same as well as an extremely repetitive gameplay loop. I rather enjoyed my time with it but I was very much in it for the stealth aspect.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Styx: Shards of Darkness
The Thief series
