More impressions for games that don't involve hidden objects? You speak madness, someguyinahat! But nay, here they are: impressions for Shadowgate (2014.)
The story: You play Jair, a "simple soldier" tasked with infiltrating a "living castle" known as Shadowgate, and taking on a power-crazed wizard known as Talimar the Black (that's probably not racist.) It's a bit loaded with fantasy-babble and I felt myself tuning out the exposition. I also don't know how closely it's adhering to the original, so it could very well be that we're looking at 80s-level storytelling.
The gameplay and puzzles: True to form of 80s adventure games, there are red herrings and useless items you can pick up. The puzzles provided a decent challenge even on apprentice mode, and from what I've been told, the puzzles in the harder modes are both more numerous and more complex. Some of the interface isn't great: you might have a hard time clicking on faraway doors to get through them, magic spells will misfire if you cast them in the wrong place on the screen, and if you want to calm someone with music, you have to "use" the instrument on yourself, not the beast in question.
The attention to detail is good, adding some extra failure dialogues if you try something that you think might work but doesn't. Using a water-based entity on a fire-based one, it makes you seem confident until the water-based entity gets scared and nopes out of the room. (The fact that that fire-based entity is unkillable is pretty irritating, and you could waste time trying things before you're dead, but that's what games did back then.) I think I died half a dozen times, but two of those were intentional to see what happened.
The audio: There are only a few voices in the game, but all are pretty good. I wish they had more interesting things to say. The music is outstanding, from swelling high-fantasy orchestral incidentals to driving electric guitar riffs.
The graphics: The environments look great. The particle effects and the animations look suitably "kickstarter low-budget," but they make it work.
The length: Steam says I took 4.7 hours to complete "apprentice" (easy) mode. There are apparently two other modes and I assume those would take longer. So there's decent length and extra replayability.
The verdict: This is a fun one. I think it's worth your time, especially if you want an old-school feeling in your games. The endgame plugged "Beyond Shadowgate" which is scheduled for 2016 - assuming that's accurate, grab this soon and be ready for the sequel.
