BRIEF: Shadoworlds (1992)

One of the English developers had a fetish for Japanese artwork.

              

Shadoworlds

United Kingdom

Teque London (developer); Krisalis Software (publisher)

Released in 1992 for Amiga and Atari ST; 1993 for DOS

   

From the moment I finished Shadowlands without finishing it, eighty-five games ago, I knew that I would eventually have to contend with Shadoworlds. Readers who think I have some sense of integrity will be disappointed to learn that I never intended to give it a fair shake. Anticipating recording a "no" in the "Won?" column, I've avoided bailing on any other game (except one with a tech issue) for over a year.

    

But now that I've had a chance to play a bit of Shadoworlds, I think I can do better than giving it six hours and quitting: I think I can reject it entirely. The manual offers no suggestion that the characters' minimal statistics improve at all during the game, and none of the reviews that I consulted indicated such. Admittedly, the game otherwise looks, walks, and quacks like an RPG, and I don't feel entirely on solid ground rejecting it. On the other hand, I hate it, and a BRIEF gives me an excuse to not even invest six hours.

          

My short-lived party.

       

Shadoworlds is a follow-up to Shadowlands from the same year. It uses the same engine but is not a sequel. It moves the action from a fantasy setting to the depths of space. At some unspecified point in the future, the galaxy has achieved peace. Weapons have been dismantled and outlawed, save for a single weapons research facility in the far reaches of the galaxy, with which communication has suddenly been lost. A team of four is sent to investigate.

     

You chose a party of four from a roster of 18 characters, including a robot and a dog. Some of their brief backstories are cute, but they have no effect on the game. Each character has a different level in the game's four statistics: strength, health, combat, and tech. (I don't know what the last one actually does in the game. Maybe it makes batteries last longer.)  I think these numbers remain fixed throughout the game. If they don't, neither the manual nor any reviewer thought to mention it. Coming from a civilization of peace, the characters start unarmed and must find their weapons on the station.

        

Only one end of the corridor is illuminated as we read a hint on the monitor.

     

The central attraction to both games is the "Super Photoscaping" lighting system, by which areas of light and darkness are determined by the presence, direction, and strength of lighting sources. The first game specialized in "pools" of light that moved with the party as they carried torches. This game has lighting embedded in the characters' helmets (for which they must find and maintain a battery supply), adding an element of directionality to the cast light. Light is also the key to solving some of the puzzles, and many doors have photoreceptors. (You also need an external light source to read the monitors in the game; I guess monitors work differently in the future.) The system was praised heavily in contemporary views of the game, but I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that a modern player, if he wasn't aware that the game was known for this innovation, wouldn't think twice about it. I also feel like we've seen these supposed innovations earlier, but I wasn't prepared with a comprehensive history of RPG lighting effects when I played Shadowlands, and I haven't researched it since then, either.

      

That's a security system that makes total sense.

      

Once you get past the lighting issue, you have a fairly standard axonometric puzzle-solving game, the types that the Brits specialized in going back to Knight Lore (1984). There are pressure plates to weigh down, switches to press and to operate with keycards, and photoreceptors to activate. Complex puzzles involve dividing the party and sending different characters to different areas.

    

There were six things I hated about Shadowlands:

     

• The all-mouse control system. The developers thought they were doing something innovative by having you click on the character's hand and then click on an item to pick it up, or by having you click on the character's head and then something to read. But you can only do one thing with any of the objects in the game (i.e., you can't pick up a monitor or read an enemy), so the whole "body part" system just added unnecessary extra clicking.

      

As a height of absurdity, even though I have to choose options 1 through 3, the numbers on the keyboard do nothing. I actually have to click the "1," "2," or "3" button at the bottom.

        

• No way to order all characters to attack an enemy at the same time. You have to click on them one by one, click their arms, and click the enemy. 

       

One character attacks a robot while the others stand there.

       

• The pathfinding. Navigating the party even through wide doorways is a nightmare.

• The lighting system. Technically, sure, I guess it's impressive. Practically, it means you spend the entire game micromanaging lighting sources.

• The food and water system. The constant depletion of the meters caused continual angst as I tried to figure out the puzzles.

• Unkillable rats that constantly nipped at the characters, making it impossible to stand still for more than about 30 seconds.

    

Shadoworlds retains all of these things except the rats (at least during the first few levels), although it has admittedly made a couple of the other bullet points more tolerable. Instead of each character having his own set of body parts, there's one active character figure in the middle of the four character portraits, and there's an option to move all characters at once. Food and water have been combined into a single nutrient system (apparently, you just eat paste in the future), and it depletes relatively slowly. Everything else is still there.

       

With my leg highlighted to move the characters, I am trying without success to get them through this doorway.

       

It was primarily the rats that drove me out of Shadowlands. The game would have been frustrating and annoying without them, but with them, I simply found it impossible. Thus, as I played the first couple of levels of Shadoworlds, I briefly started to imagine that I might suck it up and finish it. Then I ran into a doorway that took me 10 minutes to nudge my four characters through, and the BRIEF idea looked attractive again.

    

Shadowlands got a U.S. release but Shadoworlds did not. MobyGames' round-up of reviews shows that European magazines rated Shadowlands between 40 and 94 with a median of 85. Shadoworlds got between 31 and 93 with a median of 74. In addition to lacking character development, the second game also lack's the first's magic system (without replacing it with anything) and armor as part of the inventory. Reviewers also didn't like the simplistic combat, and many complained (as I did) about the pathfinding. One positive, which I didn't experience, is the ability to customize weapons with different barrels.

      

By the end of my time, my characters had a pistol and a light saber.

    

Teque London lasted until almost 2000 but never put out another RPG or even a game with RPG aspirations. Lighting effects in games would continue to improve through the present day.