Shadwen - Pre-Alpha Impressions

Shadwen is the next game from Frozenbyte, independent developers and creators of the Trine series. Announced only at the start of December last year, it’s a pleasant surprise to see that their latest game is already in a playable state. It looks great too, with the visuals, and the lighting in particular, already impressing. Shadwen focuses purely on stealth, but this isn’t your modern videogame stealth though; if you’re spotted, it’s not necessarily game over.

Time only moves when you do, or when you want it to, and you can actively rewind at any point. Rounding a corner into the path of a guard doesn’t require a reset; the game will stop and you are prompted to rewind. This mechanic also gives you a chance to breathe allowing you to stop and look at the situation, and make a plan of action. There’s a guard patrolling, and one by the door. Should I crouch and try to sneak around, or am I better off taking to the rafters?

The game’s main character, also called Shadwen, can use a rope launcher to pull herself to higher ground. With careful timing and skill, you can swing to different positions. Controlling the swings in-motion can be fiddly, but you can always stop time mid-swing and adjust. You can also use Shadwen’s weight to interact with objects in the world. Having played the Trine series, I can imagine this game will also have elements of a puzzler in-between the stealth sections, but this isn’t addressed in the demo I had access to. Opportunities to use the rope and your weight to move objects within the 3D space could help Shadwen stand out from other recent stealth games, such as Styx: Master of Shadows. This is a tactic I used numerous times to distract the guards so I could sneak by unseen.

One area in the demo is a small graveyard, and in the distance, a grand stone tower can be seen. Shadwen’s objective is to assassinate a king, and it’s easy to assume that we will be both climbing that tower and exploring other areas of this estate through the game while searching for him. While this demo was primarily built around interiors, I’m interested to see how larger exteriors are handled.

Guards can be killed or avoided, but in the demo there is no incentive for either. In the final game, you will be escorting a young girl, and then you can decide whether she really needs to see a series of corpse-riddled rooms or not. The game’s Steam page offers some insight, stating that your actions will have consequences, but whether this relates to gameplay or just story is unknown.

The page also mentions that there will be a crafting element in the final game, allowing you to build a selection of different traps to use, with lethal and non-lethal options such as spike devices and smoke bombs. Combined with the time reversal mechanic, it will be easy to experiment and reset if it doesn’t pay off.

Shadwen’s core mechanics are displayed well. Now it’s time for Frozenbyte to build an engaging game around them. As with any platformer, before adding in the challenge, it simply has to be fun to move your character around a room, and this game has that. I’m eager to see how the game progresses. Shadwen is due for release later in 2016.