First Impressions
Lost In Shadow
By Dana Russo - December 2nd, 2010
A boy is chained at the top of a tall tower and a mysterious figure approaches to swing his blade at the chains; instead of releasing the boy, his shadow is set free and sent to the very bottom of the tower. It is here where Lost in Shadow, an upcoming puzzle-platform adventure by Hudson Entertainment, begins. Using the nunchuck moves the shadow boy left and right and the Wii-mote takes control of his fairy-like friend called a “Spangle” who is used to select hidden objects and certain items in the environment.
The first thing I noticed is that visually this game is very pretty, and made me reminisce of earlier games such as Ico for the Playstation 2 (which came out back in 2001). Since you are a mere shadow, you cannot interact with anything in the environment that isn’t a shadow. For most of the game you run from left to right jumping and climbing onto other shadows and if you land on anything that isn’t, you will disappear. Occasionally I would encounter small, dark clouds called “memories”; when selected, these memories offered small bits of information to help on the particular stage I was on and they also made my shadow heavier (which equated to gaining more health). In later levels this extra health is going to come in handy when there are actual enemies to fight (I didn’t encounter any during the time I spent in the demo).
I wish I had more to tell you about the story, but not much was given away at the beginning of the demo. Honestly, the story could be lacklustre and I don’t think I would mind; the game seems to shine in its innovative gameplay. Besides jumping and climbing onto shadows, you will also sometimes encounter doorways that take you into a separate shadowy realm. It seems as though the doorways are strategically placed in spots where it will block your path, so you need to complete them before moving on (but I could be wrong).
Once you enter this special doorway you are taken to a shadow realm where you’ll need to solve the puzzles within in order to continue on your journey. None of the puzzles I encountered in the demo were all that difficult, but I’m going to assume that they get much harder as you progress. Things became more interesting later on in the demo when I was no longer just moving from left to right but I was also given the ability to shift my environment around in order to find new pathways to take.
If you aren’t careful, shifting the environment can lead to your untimely demise (I got squished between two walls because I wasn’t paying attention – oops); this adds another level of challenge to the gameplay and it was something I appreciated. Besides the environmental puzzles, I noticed that the music fit the mood of the game perfectly. It was almost undetectable, but this played in its favour because anything more would probably have been too distracting. I can see Lost in Shadow getting lost in the shuffle of next year’s games, but this one is worth paying attention to. From what I experienced with the demo it has the potential of becoming a sleeper hit. Lost in Shadow is developed by Hudson Entertainment and you can look for it in stores after January 4th.
