The guard's line of sight appears to be immediately in front of them and that's it. When I initially started the game, I would sneak around, using my grappling hook to get into advantageous positions to get behind guards to kill them, but I quickly realized that you don't have to do any of that. The guards are dumb, practically blind, move at a snail's pace, and are, quite frankly, stupid. For starters, this 'stealth' game requires virtually no stealth whatsoever. Your secondary objective, besides getting through the level, is protecting Lily.and here's where the problems start. You control Shadwen, and only Shadwen, making your way stealthily through various rooms and areas on your way to a castle with Lily following behind. After constructing your grappling hook, you begin your journey to the castle where, surprise surprise, you see Lily and the asshole guard! Now, my immediate action was, of course, jump on that guard's back and put a knife in him, but apparently the game's story vastly changes when Lily sees Shadwen kill a guard or sees a dead body of a guard she killed.Īfter this initial encounter, the real game begins. You start out in an abandoned fishing village, where you're tasked with building a grappling hook using the game's rudimentary crafting system. Now we're introduced to Shadwen, a knife-wielding young woman and our would-be assassin of a king. With all this power in our control, we make our way through the tutorial level, performing basic stealth actions, hiding in bushes and haystacks, avoiding guards, and we finally make our way to the apple tree! Woo! Apples! But oh no! A guard appears out of nowhere! Oh no! We're caught, and this guard means business, demanding he 'check under our petticoat!' Oh no! I hope some dashing young woman comes and saves our poor little orphan Lily! You can pass time with the press of a button and, if you make a mistake, can rewind time as well. When standing still, time freezes, allowing you to plan your movements carefully and examine enemy guard positions.

In typical stealth game fashion, you must use the environment and objects around you in order to avoid nasty, unsuspecting guards. However Shadwen adds an interesting mechanic seemingly borrowed from the recently released SUPERHOT: Time moves when you do.

We're given our first objective, finding an apple tree, and now we're on our way! Shadwen begins with a short storyboard sequence showing the assassination of a king! Oh no! We're introduced to our characters, Shadwen and Lily, and then we're whisked away to 'Earlier that evening' where we meet and control Lily, our little orphan companion in the game, for the first and last time.

Shadwen endings