Game Overview
The Shadows Within third-person puzzle platformer challenges players to navigate a simply designed world in search of their lost companions, who have hidden themselves away for safety. Players must utilize light, interact with NPCs, and employ a variety of traversal options to explore the environment and achieve their goals. The game’s narrative highlights the consequences of humanity’s negligence, impacting not just wildlife but also human existence. As players approach the end of the game, these themes will become increasingly direct, culminating in a confrontation with humanity’s greed, which will serve as the key to solving the final puzzle and completing the game.
Core Pillars
Exploration
Discover unique biomes and hidden treasures in a magical, interconnected world, transforming desolate areas into vibrant landscapes.
Core Game Mechanic
Players can record and replay actions as echoes to solve complex puzzles, encouraging creativity and collaboration with past selves.
Challenge and Growth
Gain powers related to wind, fire, water, and earth to evolve abilities, creating dynamic puzzle scenarios and a sense of empowerment as players progress.
Gameplay Features
Exploration
Navigate a set, intricatly detialed game world with unique and engaging puzzles that challenge players to look into the weirdest corners of a world!
Engaging Movment
Interact in the game world with fluid set of movements that make exploring the world feel fresh, unique and second nature!
Inviting Story Elements
Engage with an invigorating story that encourages players to press through the game to learn what’s the true stroy behind the Sprites relocation
Key Elements
- Themes of environmental impact of industrialisation
- Overpopulation and how it affects surrounding environements
- Ecosystems and how animal populations keep plants and other populations in check
- Fun Exploration
- Levels and puzzles are designed to push players to look at everything deeply, fully exploring the world and developing an attatchement towards it
- Movement also encourages exploration, seeing a distant shadow and having the belief and developed skills to pursue getting to distant areas
- Collection
- Finding sprites scattered accross the world encourages exploration and engagement with the worldbuilding
- Collecting can also be exteneded to collectable items like new Sprite and Cloak colours that can be tied to side-quests
Artisitc Vision
Visual Style
- Clean, low poly models for characters and NPCs
- Higher poly meshes for surrounding environment, creates a disillusionment between the characters and the environment
Audio Design
- Calm, wholesome soundtracks that serenade the player whilst they are completing puzzles
- Environmental soundscapes that interact with ceratin aspects of specific levels
Target Audiece
7+ Fans of any age can pick up and play straight away after a quick tutorial of the mechanics. Dificulty comes from the variety of puzzles rather than intricate platforming. Easy to understand story beats that have deeper underlying meaning if you have the knowledge to understand it, similar to the spy and mental health theme of Solid Snake, at a surface level it is a spy game, deeper down it is about PTSD and mental illness’
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