Lost in Shadow

22.07.2010

Critic 70/100

Users 79/100

Genre: Platform Puzzle Adventure

"Lost in Shadow" (released as "A Shadow's Tale" in Europe/Australia and as "Kage no Tou" in Japan) is a puzzle platforming video game developed for Nintendo's Wii console by Hudson Soft. It was released in Japan in July 2010, in Australia and Europe in October 2010, and in North America in January 2011. It was also released for Wii U via Nintendo eShop in 2016. Lost in Shadow is played largely in the background of the game environment as the player controls a boy's shadow, which must climb the shadows of a tall tower, rife with puzzles and enemies. He is accompanied by a sylph that can alter the direction of the foreground light sources, altering the alignment of shadows upon which he climbs. There are times in the game when the boy is able to materialize into the three-dimensional world and briefly interact with the objects themselves as opposed to simply their shadows.

The game starts with a boy imprisoned and seemingly suspended in mid air. A stranger enters and strikes at the boy with an odd looking sword. Oddly, this does not harm the boy but it does sever the connection between him and his shadow, which the stranger throws from the tower. In the story the player takes the role of the shadow as it works its way through the tower to the top. During this journey the player must stay in the shaded areas and can, for the most part, only interact with the shadows of things and not things themselves. In this quest the player is aided by 'Spangle', a sylph who can sometimes usefully change the angle of light - thus changing the shadows of objects and thus making impossible jumps achievable and unreachable objects accessible.