Shadowside Review

In this ‘first person exploration game’ (walking sim), we play as Alex Carter, a policeman in the small town of Nightwood. We start the game off with Alex visiting a turned over truck with no person to be found. After a trek through the woods we find the corpse of the driver, and return to our vehicle to report it. The next day we chase after a speeding car, and ends up at a gas station. We exchange a few words with the attendant and drive off. On the road we end up crashing, and wakes up in a office room, where through a bit of small puzzling we escape through a facility with offices, washing machines and other items into a warehouse, where we also trek our way through, into even more office rooms. At the lower levels we run into the ‘monster’, which we must avoid. Avoidance is simple, stay to the side, and the tunnel-visioned beast apparently cannot see you. Continuing on through thrashed rooms where people might be living, solving small puzzles we finally escape the warehouse. We are now set in a sewer section which leads to a few storage rooms. Same goes, we traverse the halls until a jumpscare of the monster grabs us.

This time we wake up in a kitchen-ish area, where we once again escape. More storage rooms are to come (throughout the ordeal mannaquins are stationed, looking at us), and at the end of these Alex collapses in a vision where he walks toward an unidentifiable man, and passes out again. Waking up this time, we are beside the crash-site of our police car. We track our way back to the gas station only to find out the attendant has been murdered, finding our pistol. Meanwhile we learn that we are hearing voices, the voice of a person Alex killed when he was a green cop, because he got scared. In the meantime the police has arrived at the gas station, but our lovely voice inside helps us escape from them. Going through the woods we are escaping through a wintery landscape until we take a dive into the water. Everything goes black, and we awake at someones house. A note on the door tells us they are out fishing, and that the person saved our life from drowning and freezing to death. Walking around the small village we learn that it is empty, and at the end of it we find a harbour where we escape by boat.

Next up we find yet another village, but since it is the dead of night very few people are about, and the ones we see are leaving before we can interact with them. As we go through the small town we get another vision in a skeletal room where voices tells us that we are a murderer. Returning, we are in the woods, tracking through when our inside voice hears a cat, and forces us to pick it up. With the cat we find a cave to sleep in, after we collect some firewood and start a fire. After some sleep we are on the run again. We move through the woods, only to find a police van searching for us. We learn from our inside voice, that he used to be a person who caught some cops doing dirty business, and had to pay the price. So now he wants to pay them back. Moving on, we reach an abandoned farm, where nothing at all of interest happens, only us moving forwards into a cave. As you make your way through the cave you learn that someone is living here, that do not want to get caught. As you move through the cave a man with a goats head mask blows up a bridge you are walking on. Continuing through this, quite annoying, cave network you have some encounters with the fond-of-explosives hermit.  In the end we escape by rapelling out of the cave.

When landing we hear the sound of a train. Following the sound, we jump said train and end up in the city. Here we make a call to Doc, our friend who once before has made the voice inside our head disappear. Alex decides to give him a visit, but not before getting some sleep. The next day our schizo cop walks through the alleys to get to Doc. When you get to his apartment complex you are greeted by the cops, Doc ratted you out. Whilst you are in the cop car it suddenly crashes into a falling tree. We escape the car, and hiking through the woods Alex agrees with the voice in his head that he has to kill Doc for betraying him. Not long after, ever the unfortunate soul, our cop protagonist is once again struck by bad luck – or rather an arrow from a hunter trying to hit a deer. We are then placed at the hospital, moved to a psychiatric ward, and after getting better got a job at a warehouse.

After a bit of manual labour we find a computer and hit up who the voice in our head was, and finds an address. With it, we head out into the wilderness to find the house belonging to him. There, we find the skeletal remains of the voice. Behind us, the monster we have been seen here and there comes up to us, revealed to be our voice. Whether or not we help him or kill him we die ourselves, and are told to explore the barn nearby. Here we find an underground tunnel system, and learn that the voice has been lying to us. It was not killed by cops, it was digging for an artifact which made him crazy, and he did in fact himself kill the cops. Walking through the tunnels, dodging the monster, we find some dynamite, and at the end, the artifact which we blow up with it. Next up, we’re in the cave once again travelling through it. Not much noteable happens except a weird red-demon-worm chases us for a while.

After the cave we’re out in the open again, right next to the house where we found the inside-voice corpse. The house is on fire, biohazard signs everywhere and around it are stationed military vehicles and personnel. Since the military apparently have something against you, they will kill you on sight. You take a deroute through a bush, and the next long stretch through grasslands and bushes you are avoiding the military (ie. one guy and a helicoptor) until you encounter a Humvee that chases you for awhile. Your struggles are for naught, as you are captured either way, and escorted away in a Humvee. The Humvee is then promptly attacked by the demon-worm, and you make your escape. You end up in even more caves, finding one with some demon-worm-spawns in the ceiling just chilling. In a third cave you encounter the military, our hero cop defeats them but gets shot and wounded.

After walking forever, very slowly and wobbly because of your wound, you have to do a couple of very annoying jumps you are suddenly healed again. At some point you will reach a dead end in the cave, and a solder will approach you. You are told to surrender, since the creature is hunting you because you consumed all the energy in the cave by the house. Not wanting to do so, we jump into the forest. Instead we are captured by the creatures. Tracking through a rocky landscape we come across a giant floating orb. On the way we meet a couple of zombie-ish guys, and some of the monsters. At the very end you find another ‘obelisk’ (or big red glowing stone). Picking up a bazooka, you can choose to either shoot a creature (alternate ending, you turn into a zombie) or shoot the artifact. If you shoot the artifact you wake up at the gas station, being annoyed that you blacked out again. You enter the gas station, kill the attendant and drive off. On the drive, you see what you did earlier – killed a guy, and planted his corpse and car in the woods with your name tag. You walk through the woods, find another artifact – and suddenly youre in free fall, hitting the ground. 3 hours more pass, and you are playing as another detective, who finds the corpse of Jonathan Haze, a guy who just killed Alex Carter, and jumped off a cliff to his death. And with closure, the game ends.

Thus with the ending of the 15th chapter of the game the story finally concludes. And what a story it is – and I do not mean this positively. The story of Shadowside is all over the place. First, the game is set up to be a mystery of a dead driver in the snow. Then our protagonist gets a voice inside his head, at some point the voice is completely gone. We see this zombie-like creature of a guy our protagonist once shot early in his career – only for this very zombie-like voice-inside-our-head to be a guy possessed by an alien artifact instead. Top that off with the protagonist murdering someone, and being put into an asylum, and skips years in time within the story, instantly picking up where he left. It is all very ill-fitting, the narration cannot seem to find a foothold and a direct path to stay on, rather cracking the story into other directions which, in my humble opinion, makes it worse.

I had very high hopes for Shadowside. The game sat in my library for years, and plenty of times have I looked at it and thought it was time for a playthrough. The big sellpoint for me was the Steam page, where the game looks like an interesting piece, a mystery game set in interesting locations. What I got was a game about ‘exploration’ even though the world was boring and exploration yielded nothing. The mystery was just a weird written story, and even the achievements connected to the game was nonsense. Most of them was “find 3 toys” or “find some police badges”, which had either impact nor relevance to the story what so ever. Even the gameplay was tedious. I encountered a number of small annoying bugs, the worst was at the ending where a rock fell upon me and made me unable to move – several times. The rules of the game changed, some places you can climb, others you can’t. To boot, the character is (I suppose) meant to be an american cop (his name is Alex Carter, and in his police car is an american flag), but all the voiceovers in the game are in polish.

The game is in need of serious polishing if I am ever to recommend it. The only positive thing I have to say about it was the music and ambience, which was pretty decent. It fitted the atmosphere of the game. Besides that, the game tried to be sort of a horror game, with a couple of jumpscares and such. Nothing was really that scary, and even the chase scenes were a tad boring. Besides that, the graphics were alright, but the game world was boringly made – especially for a game that tells you to explore. If you ever want to pick up this title I recommend a serious discount on it, and the understanding that you will get a story that is all over the place and a lot of walking (a lot) with nothing happening. All in all I would not recommend the game for players as it sits now.