Shadowgate

The Good
Shadowgate was an unique adventure game by ICOM Simulators released in 1987. While most adventure games at the time were text only (Lucasfilm's games aside), it was one of the first games to feature a mouse-driven interface already present in Déjà Vu, the company's first game released two years before for the Macintosh. I am reviewing the Amiga version, which I am most impressed with.

The game starts with the player standing outside the castle. There is a good reason for this. Lakmir, the good wizard, needs him to venture into the castle so that he can banish the evil Warlock Lord, who threatens to raise the Behemoth, the deadliest of Titans, from the depths of the Earth.

You start out the game with a flaming torch in your inventory, and there is a reason why you are carrying this. It will go out any minute, and you don't have long to find another torch and light that one and drop the burnt-out torch. To me, this seems like a sub-objective, if you can call it that. If you happen to run out of torches, it will become dark and you will soon fall to your death if you try to do anything else. You will have no problem trying to avoid blackouts, as long as you use the torches sparingly.

Everything is presented in their own separate windows that can be moved around and manipulated, just like Workbench. This means you can select one or more inventory items by dragging a box around them, and placing them anywhere on the main screen. The ability to drop multiple inventory items means that you waste little time and avoid blackouts. There are various commands at your disposal, and these commands take some getting used to. Of these, the SPEAK command is rarely used, and it is not to command a door to “open sesame”. The GO command can be used to go from one room to another (providing that you OPEN the door first), but I find it more easy to double-click on the exit.

There are many hidden creatures scattered around the castle, and they eventually reveal themselves if you try to take an item out of the same room as they are. Chances are that you need that item later, so you have to deal with these creatures. In one occasion, you can't take the platinum horn without dealing with a demon dog. This is not unexpected, as there are certainly many other creatures from other adventure games of its time.

As I said in the summary, Shadowgate takes full advantage of the Amiga's capabilities. The hand-painted backgrounds look good, and the animations are nicely done. There are some amazing sound effects, with my favorite being scream that you emit when you fall down a trap door if you try to take forbidden items. There is some background music, and the ending is much more satisfying. (You even get to print out a winning certificate, which is well designed.)


The Bad
The main problem with Shadowgate concerns its inventory. Once your inventory happens to be full, then if you try to pick any more items, you are greeted with the annoying “You can't take that” message. It's frustrating that I try to pick up something that I want, then try to drop as many useless items no matter how large or small it is, only to find out that it isn't enough. So my best option was to leave almost my entire inventory behind and come back for some things later, knowing them I just wasted enough light for doing so.

The Bottom Line
Shadowgate is a very good adventure game for its time, with its notable features beating those Lucasfilm games by two years. The game takes full advantage of the Amiga's capabilities. The graphics and sound is great, and whatever music there is, it is brilliantly composed. If you like good adventure games, then you have to play this.

The Good
For better or worse, it was more linear than previous ICOM point and click games. Still had you walking on eggshells though. I don't believe there are any real-time, arcade battles, you defeat monsters, ghosts etc. by hitting them with the right object from your (limited)inventory, much like say King's Quest. It's interesting how you find a sword in a locked cupboard just inside the castle, but it's barely useful for anything. So it's an interesting "pick the right object, choose the right path" sort of game with some nice, atmospheric graphics and scary death scenes. And there was one particular secret path that I thought was cleverly hidden.

The Bad
Like I said, you're walking on eggshells. If you forget to light another torch before your's goes out, you're dead. There are a lot of false moves resulting in death. Standard for ICOM games I suppose. It's learn by death.

The Bottom Line
I'm sure I completed the Game Boy version of this game in 2001 without help, but it took a long time. I don't really believe in making such sacrifices for games anymore. I gave up on this version maybe just over half way through, after deciding that the removing the game's obstacles relied too much on random, try anything, experimentation. It's not really a game which you can appreciate for the logic put into the puzzles. Sometimes even if it takes ages to solve a puzzle, or you have to look up the solution, you can respect the challenge and see it as worthwhile. In other games though, not necessarily in this one.

If you're interested in early point and click though i.e ICOM, this game is decent enough and I think more enjoyable than the Déja Vu games.

The Good
Shadowgate did offer the notion of adventure. Playing it for the first time when everything was new and the puzzles were rather straightforward aroused my curiosity. That's as good as it gets.

The Bad
First and foremost, you have no character selection or character building. This is an adventure game, not an RPG.

Second the game is 100% linear. You cannot complete the game without having done everything there is to do in the game. This means you must have explored every square inch of land, taken every item, solved every puzzle. While most RPG or adventure gamers will usually do this anyway, nobody likes to be forced down one path.

Third there is basically no plot. You are a warrior infiltrating a castle to kill the evil warlock and that's the end of the detail in the storyline.

Fourth, the puzzles could have been better designed. They are either so easy that a monkey could do them, or they are so hard and vague that it takes blind madness and lots of luck (or a cheat guide) to be able to figure them out. Most puzzle games even of this time required common sense on some level to play out as one of many factors in puzzle solving. This is not the case here, as completely irrelevant items with no correlation in the story, game, or with one another must be combined or used together to produce a (usually but not always) unforseeable effect just to get to the next screen where you get to figure it out all over again.

While some backtracking is required, each scenario can almost be a standalone puzzle. What prevents this from happening however is that you might need a frozen ball for a lake, or some other silliness. The static screens are loosely connected by requiring an item or items from a previous screen to be used to advance the game. Other than that, there really is no connection between the challenges the player is faced with. So not only is gameplay minimal to non-existent, atmosphere is as well.

The Bottom Line
If Shadowgate was the first game of its type to break new ground, I'd have to say it would be a remarkable step forward. Unfortunately we've seen this type of play in countless other games that have slipped under the radar which had been produced YEARS before Shadowgate. How a game such as this could have even moderate sales is beyond me, especially considering games as much as 7 years older did far better. Check this one out only if you're in a contest to find one of the worst designs in gaming ever produced.