A few years back Zojoi did a successful kickstarter campaign to bring back the Shadowgate franchise. Zojoi consists of members who worked on the original back in the 80s so the remake was done with love and care for the property but sadly only was released for PC, Mac, Linux, and iOS. Five years later and console owners can finally get their hands on the re-imagining of this cult classic.
Re-imagining
Shadowgate was a static dungeon crawling point-and-click adventure for Macintosh. Most people might know the port for the Nintendo Entertainment System (or even the Game Boy Color version) better. Shadowgate was notorious for being very cryptic and most younger gamers would grow up having a love/hate relationship with the game. Some who persisted and kept trying to figure out the hard puzzles found it very rewarding in the end. Re-imagining the game while staying true to the classic would prove to be a hard task. Surely, when everybody would inevitably compare it with the original and the memories it brought along.
Luckily the care they took with bringing the game into the 21st century has produced a marvelous looking piece of art. Right of the bat, Shadowgate looks amazing. The artwork is top-notch. I was truly mesmerized by the fantasy art style throughout the game. The game keeps true to the whole static screen navigation but the upgrade from vague pixels to extremely detailed masterpieces is just fantastically done. Coming across scenes augmented from the original gave me a sense of déjà-vu (pun-intended #deepcuts) but in a good warm fuzzy way.
Classic fantasy tale
Shadowgate tells the story of the last of a great line of hero-kings who gets summoned by the great wizard Lakmir to defeat the evil Warlock Lord. In doing so, you save the world, but it won’t be an easy task. The warlock is protected by all sorts of evil deep inside castle Shadowgate. By solving all sorts of magic-infused puzzles, you’ll succeed in ridding the world of this evil.
Inventory wheel
The previous non-console version of this game had mouse-operated menus to interact with which is notoriously hard to transfer to consoles. Zojoi decided a new way to control your inventory, spells, the apparel would be needed and came up with a sort of inventory wheel. You still get a pointer on the screen but instead of navigating through menu’s, you open up a wheel and use a direction on the joystick to select whatever you wanted to select. At first, I had some trouble with this system but after I got out of the dungeons underneath the castle I got the hang of it and actually saw the benefits of this idea.
Different experience
The original Shadowgate was notorious for being a game in which you would die a lot. Every wrong decision made could be fatal. As if that wasn’t enough, you had to use torches to navigate the castle. If your torch ran out, you died. This “trolling” mechanism makes its return in the re-imagining. Luckily the developers decided to introduce different difficulty levels to not scare away the unexperienced point-and-click apprentices. So, there is an option where you won’t have to worry about torch management. Different difficulties offer a whole new experience to the rest of the game. As a result, the easier mode has less complicated puzzles so a re-run of the game on a higher difficulty, still offers excitement.
My pal Yorrick
While walking the corridors of castle Shadowgate, you’ll encounter many hard to solve problems. Frustration will inevitably come your way if you keep on missing that one part to solve the next problem. Luckily the game offers help throughout the use of a strange companion. Yorrick is a skull you found at the entrance that somehow is able to communicate with you. In through point-and-click fashion, he will mock you if you keep missing the obvious. Luckily you can punch him to shut him up.
Conclusion
Shadowgate is a great re-imagining of the classic and a must-have for any fan of the original. Even though Shadowgate is still not an easy game and might still put you off from point-and-click adventures forever, I would still recommend you giving it a try. If you’re new to the genre you might want to try the easy mode to ease you into it. The ones who dabbled in this sort of games before, know success won’t come easy.
