Simple changes could have been made to stop the story from feeling a little too convenient. It just seems like a convenient plot device to justify having a vulnerable girl tag along with Shadwen, inhibiting her from simply climbing and dashing her way to the castle to complete her mission quickly, stretching out the game’s mission as a result.
Why not assassinate the King, and come back for the girl later? The entire mission is completed within the span of a single in-game night, and there’s no explanation for why the mission is exclusively time-sensitive, so couldn’t she help the girl first, and return for the mission another evening? Even with Shadwen’s good intentions, it doesn’t seem to stand to reason why an assassin on a job would go out of her way to have a girl follow her deeper into the kingdom and infiltrate the King’s castle with her. However, after being saved, Lily wants to follow Shadwen since she’s an orphan with no place to go. The story of Shadwen raises too many questions, and not of the good kind. The introduction is fairly straightforward and without cause for fuss: after a brief period where you control Lily in order to learn the controls and mechanics, Shadwen saves her from an encounter with a guard. Control is given to the player for directing Lily to a different location, and with verticality playing a big role in level design, you can stalk safely from high points in the level, and direct her around enemy patrol patterns and vision areas. If she does, she’s quick to retreat back to the last known safe/hidden location she had. By allowing enemies to see the escorted without triggering a game over, combined with some great pathfinding and serviceable A.I, it’s very rare that Lily will ever proceed in a manner which deliberately puts her in enemies’ field of view. The game mechanics are very forgiving, following more modern games’ takes on the escort mission type. I’ll say from the beginning that Shadwen isn’t at all as you imagine it to be in terms of escorting Lily.
Whenever escorting is mentioned in a video game, players are quick to let out a heavy sigh as they recall countless frustrating experiences of bad A.I, pathfinding, and game mechanics. Thanks to the word “escort”, it’s possible I’ve lost many of you already. Holistically speaking, what you have is a unique stealth game set in Medieval times that sees you play as the titular protagonist Shadwen on a journey to assassinate the King, having to escort a young girl called Lily along with you. Here you’ll find Superhot‘s time control mechanic alongside the rewind mechanic of Prince of Persia, mixed with gadgets, stealth, and trap elements of the Thief series. Well, Frozenbyte’s interpretation of this seems to permeate itself within Shadwen. What would you get, if you combined elements of the Thief series, Prince of Persia, and Superhot?
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