Trine creators Frozenbyte have released a demo for their next game, a stealth ’em up named Shadwen [official site]. They’ve got some of the physics-driven open-ended aspects of Trine, by which I mean you can knock boxes about, with lashings of stealth and crafting on top. Oh, and it’s a proper video game – it has a grappling hook.

As well as offering a taste of Shadwen, the demo is part of another promo dealio – the more people play, the cheaper the full game will be when it launches later this year.

Shadwen sounds like an interesting one. It’s a stealth game with open levels, a grappling hook to move around and tug things, physics-based antics like knocking crates (always crates!) around to bump men or distract ’em, traps you can lure folks into and… is this Trine smooshed together with Dark Messiah of Might & Magic? I’ll download the demo and have a go once I clock off for the day, but parts of this trailer do remind me of that fine physics murderplayground:



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Yes, must give this a go.

I’m also interested in talk of a Superhot-ish ‘time moves only when you do’ aspect, and the ability to rewind time. Stealth games can have such arbitrary yet unclear edges, moments where systems collide to make everything fall apart in ways that don’t seem your fault, that having time to think your options through fully – and take them back as new systems reveal themselves – sounds promising. I trust Frozenbyte to use it for more than making everything a doddle of trial and error. We’ll see!

You can download the Shadwen demo from Steam, GOG, and the Humble Store. A tracker on its site shows how much players have driven the price down from its starting point of $35.