Shardlight

I'm an adventure game fan and wanted to like this game a lot. The screenshots are nice and the story starts out intriguing and it has a momentum for a short while but then it quickly collapses. The good: visually, the game is nice, although inconsistent. Animation is mostly smooth and well done, for a pixel art game. Whoever did the visuals obviously cared. The mediocre and the bad: while the music sounds nice, it's very out-of-place and doesn't fit the game's mood at all. It quickly becomes unwanted distraction. Many of the visuals (while technically good-looking) are confusing. (17th-century flint guns and uniforms? Early 20th century cars all over in a world after the internet era?) Although backgrounds are nice, there are many locations in the game that are barely more than filler with some hotspots but nothing really interactive - they only serve to drag out the game. Most of the above issues could be overlooked, but - unfortunately - there is the story. It feels like it was heavily inspired by Hunger Games - lonely archer girl fighting the evil government (who all wear funny clothes). There's also a conspiracy. Unfortunatly, Shardlight's story is so bad that I have a hard time describing it. It starts interesting but quickly morphes into a confusing, plot-hole ridden, pointless mess. There are many characters but most are 1-dimensional cardboard cutouts that are only in place to spout naive nonsense about tyranny and government (the children are well done though). As the story progresses, more and more absurd story elements pop up. (Flying doctor? Really?). By the end plot holes would dwarf galaxies. There are several facepalm moments. Puzzles are mostly simplistic and repetitive: go to A, pick up B then talk to C. Then shoot a button with the crossbow. Rinse and repeat. This game had some potential but the poor writing destroyed it all. The only reason I gave 2 stars is the graphics but this game - even at $2.99 - is a massive ripoff.

Pretty good adventure game with an interesting setting - would be nice if it got a sequel -, was fairly enjoyable and is well worth the full price. Compared to some of Wadjeteye's other titles like Resonance, Technobabylon or Primordia I'd rate this as somewhat weaker though. Puzzles are a bit too easy in my opinion and in the 2nd half of the game you're mostly limited to a few areas at a time. Replayability is also rather low, there aren't any achievements or multiple solutions for puzzles. Still, if you like adventure games and have enjoyed other titles from Wadjeteye, you can't really go wrong with this one. Recommended.

I like Wadget Eye games, and I wanted to enjoy this one. However, when I spent some time and effort solving a puzzle, and as a result the game character told me that "nobody likes a cheater", I deleted it. Apparently I shouldn't be able to solve the puzzle at this point in the game. My apologies.

This WadjetEye game again excels in setting, plot and characters. It is fun to explore the ruins of the world and to experience the remains of society. But the puzzles ... there are 1.5 really good puzzles, even truly hard to solve, requireing you to combine items from several scenes and to think outside of the box/read between the lines. And the rest? Very straight forward, rather obvious, object manipulations. The crossbow becomes the "all-and-everything-solver". I mean, already in the 90s "find switch --- click switch" puzzles became oldfashioned and obsolete in shooter games. And now in a true point&click adventure??? This has to be done better!

I'll start by saying that I'm not the biggest fan of this genre, I dip into it every now and then when I hear that somethings particularly good. This game was supposedly in that catergory but I just could not get into it. The writing and characters are very bland, it's set in the post apocalypse and yet you could in all honesty use the same dialog in a different setting with no real problem - everyone seems to talk in a contrived way about dull things. Was that suppose to make things relatable? The only effect it seems to have is that there's no sense of atmosphere or 'punch' to anything. Add to that the antagonists being cartoonish and the main character being made of cardboard and you don't have much in the way of narrative to keep you going. It's all down to the puzzles at that point and they are competent but uninspired sadly. Avoid unless you are a die hard fan of the genre or this developer.