by These are couple games by the same guys that would go on to make Trine: Shadowgrounds and Shadowgrounds: Survivor. Shadowgrounds is a top-down shooter heavily inspired by the Alien franchise (well, at least as far as enemy design and general horror theming). There’s a lot to like here, and (right now at least) you can get both for $2.00. Even only counting my first impression, that brings my cost/hour down to $1 which is hard to argue with.
That isn’t to say that Shadowgrounds wouldn’t be worth it otherwise. On the contrary, there are a many features that I particularly liked. For one, (and as you can see in the screenshot above) your flashlight casts strange shadows all over the place. This is a fantastic effect, and makes the environments and enemies far creepier than they would be otherwise. The story may be generic, but the characters have just the right amount of camp to draw you in. The levels are organically designed and feel like actual buildings: there isn’t just one entrance and one exit and exploration is rewarded with ammo and health.
If I had one complaint, it’s that the boss I encountered near the end of my hour was really just a bullet sponge – made worse by the imprecise combat. The previous sections had taught you to be conservative with your ammo, but the boss requires you to pour all of your ammo into it. This turned me off a bit, since the boss wasn’t particularly difficult – it just had far too much health.
It was a fun hour, but I think this will also need to go into Tier Two – just barely missing Tier One since I wasn’t really compelled to keep playing. It will likely be a game I pick up if I find myself with nothing I particularly want to play some day.
That brings us to the sequel/spin-off named Shadowgrounds: Survivor. While the original narrowly missed Tier One, this one narrowly misses Tier Three. While similar to the original, Survivor does many things a bit less well. The biggest issues here come from the less sympathetic characters, less open level design, and even less precise combat. Combat in Shadowgrounds was already sloppy: your camera and aim were tied together, and the aliens don’t typically “pop” enough to distinguish them from the background. That was mostly acceptable because it was a horror-like game, and you were playing an engineer who might jump at every shadow. In the sequel, they unlocked the camera from the aim – only turning your view when your reticle was near the edge (shown below).
It may seem a small thing, but I can’t stress enough how terrible this felt. Thankfully, they provided an option to undo this, which immediately made aiming and movement better. Even so, just that doesn’t fix the other issues with combat. First, there are just too many things on-screen (to the point that my frame rate dropped to unacceptable levels on a 10 year old game), and it is entirely impossible to tell the enemies from the background – even when looking directly at them. Worse, the enemies seem to have a lot more health. They tried to counterbalance this by giving you more ammo, but having so many combat options all the time just made it feel less suspenseful and more like a generic third person shooter.
Not everything is worse, which is why it avoids Tier Three. There are a lot more enemy types (or they’re introduced quicker) with unique attacks and movements. My favorite was a poisoning enemy which twists and turns your view; but while that was interesting, the effect was lessened since combat was already hard to control. I wanted to like this game, but it just doesn’t have the same draw as the original for me.