Beyond Shadowgate

Beyond Shadowgate is a continuation of the original Shadowgate, but you don't necessarily have to have played the original to play this one. It's a fun point and click adventure with puzzles, multiple endings, a decent story, a good soundtrack, and a retro art style. Felt nostalgic, as I had first played Shadowgate when I was really little on my parents' NES.

It's a sad thing that this review have ended here.

The game is a very good experience so far and I am enjoying the similarities of the art and layouts. However, I did note it to be a lot more linear with a bit too much hand-holding, along with back and forth fetching items for people, which can get a little tiresome. There are significantly less 'useless' items that used to be fun as they required a lot of guesswork to figuring them out and if they were to be used at all (some resulting in your demise). Though these may take away from it slightly, I feel it is overall a great and quite entertaining modern sucessor to the original.

It rules. So many references.

I loved Shadowgate for the NES and this game finally lives up to it. Its got that classic fantasy nerdery that I love. The pixel art is great. The puzzles are good and not too obtuse except for a few but that's expected of any adventure game. You WILL die a lot but don't worry you won't lose any progress. You'll just get booted back to the previous room.

If you have any interest in all in the classic MacVenture games on NES (or Shadowgate, or any classic point-and-click games), this love letter to all of those is an absolute must-play. Soundtrack slaps!

As a huge fan of the original Shadowgate (NES port), I have always followed this series with heavy interest. But it has definitely had its hits and misses and I was wary about this game when it popped up out of nowhere. The superb remake of Shadowgate (2014) ended with a teaser for a supposedly upcoming Beyond Shadowgate followup. Over the next decade though, there was no further mention of this game or its progress. Now, it seems that at some point they even switched gears with it. Beyond Shadowgate is now a direct sequel to the original NES game (not so much the remake) and Shadowgate II (which is actually the first official release of a game called Shadowgate Rising that was originally in development for N64 back in 1999) is now the apparent followup to the remake…sort of. The development timeline is very convoluted and Shadowgate II is actually a pretty bad and disappointing game so where does that leave Beyond Shadowgate? In a pretty damn good place actually. Beyond Shadowgate is absolutely fantastic. To clear up any probable confusion, Beyond Shadowgate has some history worth addressing. It started out as a design document for a then-called Shadowgate II sequel for the Mac (NOT the Shadowgate II we have now, as mentioned above) but it never got made. Then the story got reworked (changed quite a bit) into a point&click style game for the TurboGrafx CD (Turbo Duo) called Beyond Shadowgate. This got released, but being on the TG16 almost nobody ever got to play it. Then the story got reworked again (closer to the original document, I believe) as a 1st-person adventure and released on the Nintendo 64 as Shadowgate: Trials of the Four Towers in 1999. Neither of the two released games were particularly great. Personally, I think the original Beyond is interesting but 64 is nearly unplayable. It seems like “3rd time’s a charm” though because they gave it one more go and fully nailed it this time. Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel again, this time they deliberately went back to the original wheel and simply polished it up a lot. Everything looks and feels just like the NES Shadowgate, but slightly modernized with better graphics (particularly with the color depth, but still pixel art) and a lot of those rough edges sanded down a bit. The music is great (maybe not quite a earwormy as the original but still strong) and sounds authentically chiptune. The game is longer too. Took me about 4 hours on my first play-through. And the story is interesting, with notably more depth than the previous title. If I have one criticism it’s that it isn’t particularly challenging. You’ll definitely die a lot just from trying various things (in true Shadowgate style), but the penalties are minimal. And while I wouldn’t expect the puzzles to be as incredibly obtuse as in the original, these ones kind of swing a bit too far in the other direction. Most of the puzzles have very obvious and heavily telegraphed solutions. The only times I found myself “stuck” at all, I had just simply failed to notice something here or there. But the robustness and length of the adventure definitely make up for the over-correction in difficulty. What the game does exceptionally well is in the area of homage and even fan-service. And not in too cheap a way either (maybe a little cheap in spots, haha, but still effective). There are a number of subtle and also very overt ways in which it pays direct tribute to not only the classic Shadowgate but also all of the other MacVentures (Deja Vu, Uninvited, etc). And in pretty fun ways, at that. The whole package here is just delightful and this is easily the best offering from Shadowgate we’ve gotten since the 2014 remake. And some ways I like it even more than that one. If you have any affection for Shadowgate, you pretty much have to pick this one up. If only Shadowgate II could have been at this level.