Shadowgate: Special Edition

This video game is a complete remake of the classic shadowgate. Which aims to retell the story through a new user interface, new graphical paintings, new orchestrated soundtrack and even a new hint guide that follows you during your adventure. It comes with 3 difficulty levels to choose from and has extra retro settings for those that feel like classic tunes, transitions and text to spice it up. All of the graphics appear to be painted, which improves the original look of the castle. They do try to animate some of the monsters, but they end up looking like puppets on strings. Which for me wasn't a problem because it's all about the paintings. Since this game is about telling a story while simultaneously going through a dungeon crawl, the art style fits it perfectly. I can compare it to viewing the videos for Lords Of War or The Burdens of Shaohao from recent warcraft media, but with a little more color and detail, especially for the cinematics. The new musical score is an orchestrated version of the classical 8-bit soundtrack. It fits perfectly with the remake's graphical presentation and even comes with the option to toggle Retro Mode : Audio for Hiroyuki Masuno's original 8-bit versions. The story itself is linear with about two mandatory side quests that need to be done in order to advance the plot and the pacing of the game is incremental; you'll see a fair share of Lakmyr and Talimar as you solve large portions of the castle. The game initially comes with 3 difficulty levels to choose from. You may opt to follow the game's starting tutorial as you select the desired difficulty. Choosing one of these will affect the density of your torch power, turn count and puzzle complexity. However, a select few important puzzles will remain the same across all three difficulties. 5/5 I recommend the game as it is, but i also do so because the game has a good possibility of coming out with more features in a future patch. The world needs more Shadowgate!

A key point to emphasize with regards to the new Shadowgate game is that it is not simply a port/remake of the original Shadowgate. While it is based off of the original Shadowgate, and shares similarities with it, there is a significant amount of new content - rooms, items, descriptions, everything that goes into making the game. So, anyone who has played the original who is expecting to simply blow through this game in short order is in for a big surprise. That said, the new Shadowgate shares much in common with the original, where it is a near certainty that anyone who enjoyed the original will enjoy the new Shadowgate as well. All of the core aspects of a good Adventure game are here. In your journey through the castle Shadowgate and surrounding areas, you will be exploring through a wide variety of locations, gathering hints, clues and information, discovering items and putting them to use, solving puzzles, uncovering mysteries, all while working toward your end goal. The challenge and adventure of Shadowgate is alive and well, and fans of the series will be thrilled to see all of this brought into a new game so well. It's not very often that a game like the new Shadowgate comes along. A beautiful blend of old and new, a game which will appeal to fans of the series, fans of the genre, and people new to both of them. A game in a series which for so long had seemed lost and without hope, brought back to life, not in just a simple port or in a cheap use of the name, but in a lovingly-crafted game, both a tribute to what has come before, and a promise of what is to come. Dave Marsh, Karl Roelofs, and everyone at Zojoi, have created a masterpiece with Shadowgate. The series is once more in good hands, and the future is brighter than it has ever been. Journey once more into the castle Shadowgate!

I was glad to see that the Linux port arrived here and picked it up again immediately after having paused it for a while due to not booting up WinXP. I played the lower (normal) difficulty setting but will definitely play the higher one at some point. This is exactly what I want from a remake of an old game, the gameplay is mostly the same with some optional improvements, graphics are HD and beautiful but with a retro option too, music is awesome and the best point for such an old game was, that they added a lower difficulty setting, how I wished that for many games from that era. It was a wonderful experience and will be replayed. :) I'm looking forward to the next episode in 2016.

First note the special edition contains no additional gameplay, just feelies and other digital swag you'd normally expect to be packaged in a limited edition boxed release. These are of similar quality and style to game itself. The game is less of a remake and more of a reconstruction from the ground up. For old fans wondering if it recaptures the old shadowgate experience, yes it does, but don't expect to be faced with the same old puzzles we've seen again and again in the previous shadowgate ports. The essence of what makes shadowgate what it once was is still there, but puzzles, map even the story have been rewritten and expanded to make this revival a bigger grander new experience to recapture the attention of old fans and delight the new. While the new puzzles are quite challenging the game now has many new modes to curb the difficulty for new players and still provide the hardcore experience for old fans. Achievements unique to different modes and the new unlockable hidden deaths mode which will have you searching for old a new creative ways to kill your character (a homage to old adventure games like kings quest and the original shadowgate) provide an modicum of replayability this genre usually lacks. Race against the clock as each mode gives you only a limited amount of time and resources to reach the end before the world ends or your life is snuffed out, also note the attention given to the new narrative. The plot is much the same as the original but now told in much more detail with written lore, voice acting and stylised cutscenes to give a sense of epicness to your quest to save the world from the dark wizard. Whether you are a fan of the original or just point and click adventure games in general you owe it to yourself to experience this lovingly crafted remake of this much adored classic. The industry needs more remakes like this and the monkey island special editions to offset the influx of shovel ware hidden object games polluting the genre.