In a time where Assassin’s Creed is more about the glitches than the assassinations and stealth comes a little game from the makers of Trine called “Shadwen”.
Now… Don’t judge a book by its cover or a game by its name because if you do… You probably end up like me and get surprised.
Story
In Shadwen, you play the titular character who is introduced in a rather nice motion-comic style cutscene where she murders the king in front of a young girl, after which she asks said girl “Now what to do with you…”
As I’m of the “Leave no witnesses” school of assassinating, my choice in that matter would be crystal clear.
Anyways, after the cutscene, flash back a couple of hours and take control of the girl, named Lily. She’s used to guide you through the tutorial and teach you the mechanics (more on that later) up until she gets caught stealing apples. Then we finally take control of our assassin as we delve into the more advanced mechanics, which takes us all the way up to where Lily is.
Then, we get something rather interesting. As opposed to saying you have a moral choice, the game just lets you do whatever you want. So either you distract the guard, or you outright kill him. As I also graduated from the school of “Leave No Stone Unturned and No Guard Alive”, I took the logical route and stabbed the guard in the neck. This prompted a “Lily will remember that” kind of text box that disappeared WAY too quick for me to read, but I’m guessing that the basic gist was that Lily saw you murder someone and thusly resents you. That’s the last time I save a little girl from a guard who’s threatening to frisk her. And seeing as these are medieval times, frisking means something else ladies and gentlemen!
Anyway, after saving Lily, Shadwen decides to take her along for the ride since Lily is hungry enough to tell the guards about Shadwen in exchange for an apple, and so the unlikely partnership is formed!
For when you really need your annual Assassin’s Creed fix.
Well… I say “partnership” but it’s more akin to a hostage situation since Lily hates killing and I ran through each level like a genocidal maniac, leaving no guard standing, which I got scolded for in each loading screen.
I got through a fair amount of levels, and on each loading screen Lily would scold away, saying I “was going to go to Hell” and that I was “an evil human being.”, which prompted me to think that it would be an awesome mechanic that if I went too far for Lily’s liking, that she’d run straight for the guards and betray me, but alas, that didn’t happen. She did run for the guards but apparently she’s wearing an invisibility cloak.
Gameplay:
Shadwen is an interesting beast in the gameplay section. There’s a lot of awesome mechanics and a lot of things where you think “This is lacking”. For instance, I love the fact that you can’t be seen by the guards, no matter what. If you’re seen, it’s game over. However, as opposed to say… Assassin’s Creed, where you have to follow a target without being seen, if you are seen there, it “desynchronizes” and you have to sit around waiting for a loading screen to end before you can start the mission again, from the beginning.
In Shadwen, you get the ability to rewind time to a previous point. So, let’s say you assassinate a guard, but didn’t notice his buddy, who was standing in the shadows, right? The game stops, game over. Then you press R and you rewind time to before you did the assassination and now, since you know there’s another guard, you can plan in a different way. Maybe you cause a box to fall that makes the guard move in that direction? Or you lure your first target to another spot? You choose!
That’s where Shadwen excels, the ability to choose your own ways. However, that’s where it falls short as well. It gives you the freedom to do things like luring guards to certain spots, but it doesn’t give you the total freedom to kill them in any way you want.
For instance: You get a grappling hook to get you to higher places, you can attach said grappling hook onto boxes and if you’re standing on a wooden beam, you can jump from it and use your weight to catapult the crate in your direction (physics are a bit weird in the world of Shadwen, since wooden crates the size of a pony are easily pushed and pulled). Now, after accidentally doing that, I thought to myself “How friggin’ cool would it be if I managed to kill a guard in that way?” Since there was a guard standing nearby that I couldn’t sneak behind, I decided to try it, only to find out that I couldn’t shoot the grappling hook into living tissue… There go all my dreams of playing a female Scorpion assassin…
So, that awesome potential isn’t fully utilized, but then there’re things that shouldn’t even be in the game. For instance, there’s a crafting option to make different traps and utensils to help you out, however, I never needed to use them. I just needed my trusty dagger and a nearby barrel to kill my way through a level. The one time I did use a trap (a mine) I only killed one guard and alerted all of the other ones, which is a pain in the ass.
Another mechanic is Lily, whom you have to guide through the level by clearing out guards. She helps you with doors with two levers (one for each character), however, she seemed to be adept at opening those all by herself. Now, I understand why Lily is there from a narrative standpoint. They use her as the conscience that tries to steer you from killing (too bad I was playing, since I killed my conscience a LONG time ago…) and they made it so the guards don’t really notice her even if she’s standing right behind her but… Why is she there though? If the guards don’t notice her, why does she HAVE to be there? I like the banter between levels, but that’s the only reason she’s there for. So she’s just another mechanic that was crammed in there for the sake of having a mechanic even though it’s useless.
Now, as I said before, you can rewind time when you get a game over screen, however, you always have that ability. If you miss a jump (and you will), you can just rewind and try again. While I applaud this choice, it does make the game a bit easy. Now, if it were just the rewinding, it’d be okay, but if you aren’t touching the WASD keys, time stops completely and you can freely look around with the camera. At first, this seemed like fun, however after a while, it got more and more annoying. A good example is when you need to open a Double Lever Door with Lily. You have to stand next to the lever, but if you just stand still, time doesn’t move. So you either have to hold the “Keep Time Moving” button or crouch. That’s pretty annoying. Another annoying thing that seemed absolutely awesome in the beginning is that time also freezes if you’re mid-jump. Now, while pulling off an aerial assassination in which you just stomp on a guard’s head like Mario stomps a Goomba, it’s nice to have time stopped so you can aim, but if you’re frantically trying to jump onto a ledge to dodge a guard, it doesn’t help that time stops in the middle of the jump. If anything, the “Keep Time Moving” button should’ve been a “Stop Time” button. That would’ve been a bit handier.
I also tried it out with a controller, but I wouldn’t recommend that course of action. Mouse and keyboard are much, much, much, MUCH better.
Though… The controls ARE a bit finicky at times. If you don’t shoot your grappling hook in the right spot, you might end up dangling below a wooden beam as opposed to sitting on top of it. This caused a lot of game overs for me. Often I thought that I could get on top of something, but I shot it in the wrong part of the beam and Shadwen ended up awkwardly dangling from it like a pig carcass. And when you do manage to get onto a beam, be sure to let go of every key, or else you just end up running off of it again.
Visuals:
Now, I’m not a graphics person. I can play Zelda 64 and still think the thing looks absolutely amazing. So to me, Shadwen looked alright. It was good. The only problem I had with the visuals was that it was WAY too dark and murky.
I mean, I get it, you make a game about a stealthy assassin, so it can’t be Viva Piñata levels of bright and colourful, but for God’s sake, at least make the guards stand out a bit… There were a lot of times where I thought I had cleared a room, only to suddenly get a game over screen because I didn’t see a guard standing in the corner of the level. I’m not saying give them bright yellow hats or something, but make their colour stand out a bit more. Since just about everything is muted gray, brown and red, give the guards something blue or something, to make them a bit easier to spot.
Or, since guards get a white edge around them when they talk, give me some kind of “Eagle vision” where I can ping it and see the guards or something.
Conclusion
Shadwen is a game for those who truly enjoy a game that is hyper heavy on the stealth. The amount of play options you have is pretty solid, though it isn’t entirely “choose your own path”, which is kind of a shame. It is fun to play, though after a while it does get kind of stale, so it’s best to knock it out in one sitting.
However, the time I had with it were fun and made me wish for more of these games where you’re useless in an outright fight, but deadlier than a fart after taco Tuesday when you attack from the shadows.
This game gets a solid 7/10 from me. Even though it has things that aren’t really needed and lacks some things that would be sweet, it’s a fun game to play around in.
