Stealth games are a tricky thing to get right. There has to be a balance between realism and leniency to give a challenging experience while still making it fun to play. In my opinion, Shadwen doesn't traverse this line very well. The AI is limited, and as the game is also based on a series of escort quests you have to work around this AI for both the enemies and the little girl Lily which you are escorting. It can lead to a frustrating experience. There's also a few other questionable components, the story tells itself mostly through overheard dialogue with the guards and little snippets inbetween levels, but it feels almost like an afterthought. The game actually has some interesting elements, such as time manipulation which could have added another layer to the storyline if it was incorporated, but it never gets mentioned. In spite of all this, I've given the game 4/5. It may not make sense as what I've written above is unfavourable, but I think the game comes into it's own when you approach it a little differently. If you're like me it's tempting to take the pacifist route, as I did on my first playthrough; in retrospect I find this to be the least fun way to play through the game. Playing somewhat more.. messy? Killing the problematic guards, using all your (lethal) tools etc. feels so much more satisfying. It also helps offset the poor AI/pathing issues which I mentioned earlier. One thing I was disappointed about compared to the demo is the removal of the scoring component. I played the demo multiple times trying to get new high scores, I am very surprised to see this feature missing from the main release and hope it's something Frozenbyte could look into for a future patch perhaps? In summary: Shadwen can be a very fun game, but in my opinion needs to be approached with a different mindset than the average stealth game. It's tempting to abuse the time mechanic to try to get a perfect run, but I honestly think this cheapens the experience of the game.
First off let me just say before I start gushing about how amazing the game is, that the game does have problems. Bugs exist when playing on modern OS'es, but to be fair they're easily worked around - there's a few gameplay based bugs, but nothing which really halted my progress. Aside from that my game crashed twice through my playthrough of the GOG version, but each time it actually recognized the crash and asked me if I wanted to pick up where I left off, so I'd consider that a non-issue. There's also the fact that due to the low resolution, the game looks incredibly dated in parts - which in itself I'd expect wouldn't distract a buyer from this site, but it can occasionally be an issue when you're looking for that one item which you may or may not have missed to solve a puzzle. With that said, this is still an amazing game. On the surface you have a first person exploration/puzzle based adventure game, along the same lines of Under a Killing Moon (you played that already, right? get that too!) with some very witty, tongue-in-cheek dialogue, interesting puzzles for the most part, and an.. adventurous plot. To put it more succintly I'd say it's the gaming equivalent of playing a B-Movie, with all that entails. The game is semilinear at heart, offering multiple possible methods of completing some of the goals, along with two different overall gameplay difficulties and multiple endings based on key choice(s) throughout the game. It can be quite punishing in places, which is why saving often is a good thing - not only for recovery reasons but also so you can freely experiment with dialogue choices. Quite often something would pop up which made me think that saying it would get me killed, but I'd feel compelled to do so anyway - and it was usually worth it. The puzzles are for the most part logical, though some are actually quite difficult - but this just adds to the charm for me, an actual sense of satisfaction when completing something rather than the move from A -> B -> collect reward mentality prevalent in the more recent generations. In closing, I played this game through for the first time here on GOG, having played Under a Killing Moon years and years earlier when it was first released. I played this at a time when I was getting very jaded with gaming in general, finding little time to play through the games I already had, watching an ever mounting backlog of games which I couldn't bring myself to being playing grow ever longer. Then I started playing this, and got hooked very fast. This game made me remember all the things I'd forgotten that I love about gaming; despite the faults/bugs previously mentioned. It's completely deserving of the title 'Good Old Game' and I'd recommend the series to anyone remotely interested in adventure games, B-movies, or cool hats.
