A third moment had a guard become alert because he himself had wandered into and moved the cart. Elsewhere, a guard didn’t become alert even as I was pushing a crate against him. My finger was on the rewind button ready to redo my actions, but the guard simply looked at the bodies then stood on them and stopped reacting to anything. I’d managed to kill three guards but didn’t have time to move the bodies, as another rounded the corner. Most of the time a guard will run to trigger an alarm if they see a body, but there was one stand out occasion where that didn’t happen. The whole gameplay premise of Shadwen relies on the fact that neither character should be seen, and when Lily quite clearly flaunts that rule, it really breaks the immersion of the game. While it’s lenient and prevents you from failing without having control, there were a number of times when she would run right next to them or right in front of them, and they wouldn’t even react. However, they are really bad at catching Lily. Shadwen can’t fight the guards one on one, so hiding from them is your best option when they are alerted to your presence. The guards are quite quick to react to noise and if they spot Shadwen they will shoot on sight. Even when looking out for chests, there never seemed to be enough materials to craft a large arsenal of traps, and they really aren’t required anyway due to the simple minded guard AI. You can mix it up a bit by crafting different traps, such as a wall mounted poison dart trap which has two shots, but you have to find the components to craft them in chests. In place of that tension a sense of boredom creeps in, due to the repetitive nature of the game in general. Without an imposed limit, there’s no fear of failure or of being caught, removing any tension that Shadwen could have possessed. You do need to hide the bodies though, because if they are discovered and the alarm sounded then it’s game over.Ī rewind function makes that little more than a hollow threat, as you can simply skip back in time. Shadwen is not a very good experience on the whole, because it is what most games these days are or are reduced to, which is usually a good concept with mediocre gameplay on top of an on-the-nose-half-hearted-narrative. This can be done by either sneaking up behind them, jumping out from haystacks and bushes, or diving on them from above. Shadwen (Review) Shadwen (Review) Published on : JJby nokeystothecity. While dropping crates could be fun, it was often much easier just to cause a small distraction which would open a path for Lily to run across, or get Shadwen’s hands dirty and directly kill the guards. In fact, it becomes an annoyance while listening to conversations, since they freeze too when there is no movement and you’re left with isolated syllables to try and decrypt. It’s not much more than a gimmick and one that doesn’t really help much. It’s there to allow for more tactical thinking and considered action, but ends up feeling a little cumbersome, as I found myself often holding R1 to move time forward so that I could see guard routes and plan my moves.

One interesting twist is that time only moves when you do or when you want it to.

Shadwen review