After I wrote about “Beyond Shadowgate” in my Kickstarter post yesterday, I was unsure if I’d ever actually played it. I have distinct memories about playing a game like that, but I was really so terribly sue that I’d played Castlevania on the Mac Classic back in the day, only to find out it had been an entirely different game, Dark Castle. So I had to play a version of Castlevania just to get back some of that gamer cred I’d lost.
I know I didn’t play Shadowgate on my NES, because I didn’t have an NES. I was an Atari girl. That meant something, back in the day. It meant I didn’t get to play any of those NES, or Commodore 64, or Amiga, or Apple // games. Instead, I could play… Miner 2049er. So, take that, haters.
I did have a Mac (and still do), since I was a Macintosh developer at some point and got deep discounts on them. So if a game came out on the Mac, I probably played it at some point. Anyway. Shadowgate. I remember playing a game like it, on the Mac, but I’m beginning to doubt it was Shadowgate.
Shadowgate came out for a bunch of systems, but their NES version was, I think, the first and most iconic. Shadowgate is a point-and-click adventure game. Unlike the usual point-and-click games that put the player character into the picture, Shadowgate is from first person. This makes the danger seem very much more immediate, especially in the timed sections where death is moments away.
There is a lot of dying, in Shadowgate. Usually it’s you.
The interface is extremely simple. There’s an un-animated view of your current location in the upper left. You can’t turn around; when you are in a location, the view is always the same. On the upper right is your inventory. Along the bottom, either the narrator is telling you something (usually, “You will die in two seconds. WHAT DO YOU DO?” or words to that effect), or the actions you can take, as well as a simple map of your location and possible exits, which update as you unlock new exits.
I need to point out that the “timed” sections are not real time. It just means there’s one or two more actions you can do before the bad thing happens, which is usually, your death. No worries, though. The game lets you get right back to the point where you made your bad decision and lets you try some good ones.
In the demo I played, it doesn’t seem like it is possible to get into a situation where there is nothing you can do to progress. You have a limited number of items to use, a limited number of things to use them on, and the solutions are heavily hinted at in the text. I was able to get far enough in the demo last night without ever feeling like I needed to look at the walkthrough they also provided. Usually the correct solution was obvious after a death or two.
The Plot
You play as what I imagine as a hobbit-like character. Your character is not shown, so who really knows, but that’s what it seems like to me. You are imprisoned for being a dirty rotten thief. The other prisoners are the king and his retinue who were captured on the road and brought here, to be held as a usurper takes over the kingdom. You are soon tasked with bringing word of the king’s capture to those who can do something about it. Unfortunately, minotaurs and indescribable farthing-loving monsters would prefer you did not do this.
The Campaign
It’s a little weird that this version of “Beyond Shadowgate” doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the other game, also called “Beyond Shadowgate”. From what the wiki says, there’s nothing connecting that game to this one. You’d think they’d have called it “Beyonder Shadowgate”, or something.
The campaign also comes with a NES cartridge with gorgeous label art. You could have even got a glow-in-the-dark version. Unfortunately, though, the cartridge is not playable. This is going to be a fun time when someone sells it to a retro game store for some ungodly sum, they resell it without trying it first, and hilarity ensues.
Anyway. With my failure, evil has prevailed. I’m going to steal that and use it for my e-mail signature from now on. When the game is actually released, and I beat it gloriously, only then will I be redeemed, the kingdom saved, and evil defeated.
Until then, I guess evil can do what it likes.
