Cause I was getting sick of holding down the Q key. You just set a key for it and you can toggle between real-time and pause time modes at will, which is great. Luckily there's a 'Time Toggle' feature in Settings-Binds. I hate jumping puzzles! But once I got past the first puzzle in the prologue, I've never had to do it again.Īnd 'the time moves only when the character moves' mechanic. There are really only two things that annoy me about the game: Swinging with the grappling hook. There is one good thing about Lily, I never get lost! Lily knows the way, so I often let her lead (she also shows me where all the good hiding spots are). She never gets in the way or alerts the guards, so I find myself ignoring her for the most part.
I thought Lily would annoy me, but she's really not an issue. It's the most enjoyable game I've played this year. Most of them are first person (which makes me very sick).Īs for Shadwen, even without the Editor, I don't regret buying it. Unfortunately, I don't know of any other third person stealth games. It too is played from a third person perspective. It's probably my favorite stealth game of all time and the only Thief game that offers a third person perspective. The 15% discount will last until May 24, 1:59 PM UTC.Īpehater: games similar to shadwen? have you checked out Thief: Deadly Shadows Put on your soft leather gloves, don your darkness-colored robes, and keep your murders quiet as you become Shadwen, DRM-free on GOG.com. Killing might not be necessary, as long as Shadwen manages to stay hidden or use distractions, thus sparing young Lily the horrible sight of this muffled violent dance. Before you execute any action, time stands still, allowing you to change plans on the spot and even rewind failed attempts. Perhaps there is another way to get past these guards, climb on that scaffold, and continue on her mission to assassinate the king. Time stands still as Shadwen lurks behind a dark corner, wishing that the little girl cowering beside her didn't have to witness the brutal scene that is about to unfold. It's not that these mechanics don't all work together, but added together, the total is a rather generic and familiar experience that has been done better elsewhere before.Shadwen, a thrilling exercise in silent killing within a bleak medieval environment, is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, DRM-free on GOG.com with GOG Galaxy support for achievements and a 15% launch discount. The manipulation of time is used to either do that or lie in wait for guards on patrol to move past you, which is also a familiar application of this kind of game mechanic. It's nothing new, but since time only moves when you do, you'll often find you need to scrub further back by five minutes or more to try everything you did before in a more streamlined fashion. It always feels a tad unfair to discount how a game adheres to its genre, though the cycle of killing guards and stashing their bodies in piles of hay or leaves while avoiding detection is a familiar theme in video games. It's tempting to go over and see what's there, but it remains out of touch: Your focus lies on guards, castle walls, crypts, and muddy fields, and you fumble through them over and over. Everything is dark, brown, and gray - which is disappointing given the deep purples and blues you see over the horizon in the starry night sky on each level. The stillness and expanse of each map works together to make progressing through the game clunky and uncertain - you're constantly unsure of where to go and will sink a lot of time heading in wrong directions or even going backward due to the sameness of the maps. Until then, you're left to flail around and wonder why things like jumping and swinging around with a grappling hook are so frustratingly hard.
This is intended to enhance and play up the strategic element of everything happening around you (what were you not aware of until it was too late?), but this isn't explained until you're considerably into the game. For example, there's a big learning curve in Shadwen because time only moves when you do. This action-stealth adventure tries to break new ground, but all the features are handled in a way that doesn't really improve the gameplay at all.