A dark adventure game about the vengeful ghost of a girl.
Zack Zhang + Sigursteinn Gunnarsson + Nolan Filter + Elyse Lemoine
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Shade is a streamlined adventure game with no dialogue, where the storytelling is told through animation and sound only. There’s no inventory system – the player is only allowed to carry one item at a time and may use that item to solve puzzles in a number of different ways (ie. throwing, cutting, stabbing, pulling, etc.) There are no mazes or multiple rooms – the entirety of the game’s environment takes place in a single, long room which the player scrolls through as they move closer and closer to their target.
The main character is a young girl who has become the recent target of a serial killer. After being choked and hanged, her angry spirit – or shade, if you will – comes back with the vengeance in the form of her shadow. Cutting herself loose from the noose she’s hanging from, the Young Girl must manipulate the shadows and light around her in order to move across the wall to the end of the room, where her murderer awaits.
The player’s main ways of solving puzzles are by moving through the shadows of objects still in the living world. In order to proceed across the room, the Girl must manipulate any light that’s in her path. This is done by picking up the shadows of objects in order to influence them in the real world. By using these objects, she is able to manipulate the living world in order to let her continue her journey to the other side of the room.