Maybe with more powers, it could have livened up the pace and “Lost in Shadow”could have been more engaging. Perhaps with a more interesting art style or smartly designed enemies, it could have lent more personality. Those stunning moments where I got a new sword or an ability were too spaced out. I needed to feel like I was gaining a new power or learning something as I climbed floor to floor. “Lost in Shadow” is a very good game, but once I moved past the novelty, there needed to be something to keep me hooked. At times, it can even get too dour as players collect memories and uncover the truth behind the tower, the boy and the monsters. The game has the feel of a classic NES game, but it lacks the graphical charm of hand-drawn sprites or the personality of goofy protagonists. Part of the problem lies with the solitary nature of the journey and the visual style, which apes “Ico” a little too much. Instead of being short and sweet, it drags on a little too long in places. It almost feels like an indie game like “Shift” that wears out its welcome. Players will find themselves collecting three Monitor Eyes needed to open a passageway and repeating the process over and over again. The problem is that the Hudson Soft developers don’t introduce enough new elements to keep the gameplay fresh. Fighting creatures is all a matter of timing, dodging attacks and counterattacking.Īs for the level design, it borders on brilliant, but “Lost in Shadow” does lose steam partway through. It isn’t the hyperkinetic moves that players have come to expect from “God of War.” The boy’s shadow finds a sword and can slash away at enemies.
In addition to obstacles, players also will have to deal with simple combat. Moving a light source up and down or left and right can bend the umbra of a platform in one direction, narrowing a gap, so that the boy’s shadow can leap across. A column twisted the right way can cast a stairlike shadow. Sometimes they’ll use the shade’s fairy helper to activate objects so that they shift and change positions.
Tsuchihashi and his team ingeniously use this concept to create puzzles and obstacles that players must overcome. It’s a 2-D platformer that plays off a 3-D world. They can only travel across the two-dimensional silhouettes of scaffolding, stairs and other structures of the tower. It tosses the shade off an enormous tower, and players will have to control the shadow so that it returns to its owner.Īs a shadow, players won’t be able to move in the real world. The game starts off mysteriously as a masked figure cuts away a boy’s shadow. Those same concepts of hiding your shadow in the shade became an integral part of his latest project. According to the director Osamu Tsuchihashi in an interview, he used to play the game as a child. In a similar vein, the inspiration for “Lost in Shadow” lies in shadow tag (a player steps on another’s shadow to tag the other person “it”). But instead of mock battles in the living room, we’d have them online. None of us knew back then that as adults we’d still be doing the same thing.
We’d trade shots and argue over who hit whom with our made-up bullets. I would take cover behind the couch, and he’d make shotgun sounds as he pretended to rain shells on top of me. As a kid, I’d play war with my brother and we’d fire imaginary guns inside the house. Sometimes the best game ideas come from childhood.
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