Trapped In Its own Shadow

HIGH The golf segment.

LOW Literally waiting on the bus.

WTF Why is there not an effective synonym for shadow?

SCHiM makes an excellent first impression. 

Shown from an isometric perspective, SCHiM’s world feels alive — cars buzz down busy streets, children play in the park, and birds fly through the sky.  Each of these elements casts a shadow, some of which appear to be alive with great blinking eyes peering back and forth.  Taking control of a displaced shadow, the player must leap between other shadows in pursuit of their missing human.

The story begins in childhood.  A young boy and his shadow explore and play before he eventually grows into a teenager, young adult, and finally a man. Told entirely through pantomime, I watched as the man went through hardship before ultimately losing connection with his shadow.  Each stage of SCHiM involves the player controlling the estranged shadow and pursuing him across city streets, construction sites, and beaches in an effort to reconnect.  While the thematic elements at work here are not particularly unique, they are relatable, especially with the state of the world today. 

Represented as a frog-like being, the player-controlled shadow can only survive in shadows cast by objects in the world.  Missing a jump and ending up between shadows on “land” spells almost instant death – mercifully, the developers allow the player a single ‘safety jump’ to course-correct after a miscalculation.

In this situation, both planning and opportunism became my biggest allies. I surveyed my environment, analyzing things like the patterns of pedestrians, the flow of traffic and the flight path of a bird, waiting for my moment to strike.  As the world wheeled around me, indifferent to my presence, I keyed into its rhythms, readying myself to spring forth.  There is an almost tactical nature to this process that belies the simplistic, cutesy façade of quaint towns and living shadows.

Unfortunately, failure in these instances grinds play to a halt.  More than once, having missed a critical jump, I found myself simply sitting, waiting for the next passing vehicle or cyclist to hitch a ride on.  At times, these waits were so protracted that I wondered if I’d taken a wrong turn and hit a dead end.  Many of SCHiM’s levels are expansive, and despite a button dedicated to moving the camera in the direction of the goal, I would often find myself lost.  The top-down perspective with a limited window into the world only exacerbates this issue.

I found SCHiM to be more successful when it broke out of the monotony of open, sunny city streets and moved the action to more linear levels with intentional theming — things like a rainy night with shadows appearing and disappearing with each lighting flash, or a burning building with dynamic shadows that ebbed and flowed with the light provide welcome mechanical mix-ups.  Unfortunately, these more tightly-designed stages are the exception rather than the rule, making up a disappointingly small percentage of the overall experience.

Beyond the general platforming that makes up most of SCHiM‘s play, there is also a mechanic by which the player can influence the object they are currently inhabiting.  For example, it’s possible to raise the forks of a forklift when in its shadow, thereby creating a bridge to my destination. Some of these are more kinetic, such as a clothesline that acts as a trampoline, or a carousel that can be used as a slingshot to launch the player across the map.  These moments, bouncing through the environment, skipping from shadow to shadow fluidly, find SCHiM at its best, and the juxtaposition of realism and whimsy provides real joy when the developers fully explore their mechanics of light and shadow.

Unfortunately, mechanics like these feel underutilized. Sometimes I could prod a bird into flight, but more often than not it would simply chirp, content to sit in the grass. Most of the inhabitants of SCHiM react this way – a dog might bark or a person might sneeze, but rarely do they provide a useful reaction. I sometimes found myself unsure where to go next, only to discover that I was supposed to interact with an object but had forgotten the mechanic even existed because it so rarely produced results. 

SCHiM is built around contrast —  light and dark, youth and age, harsh reality and naïve whimsy.  Unfortunately, this dichotomous nature leaks into its mechanics, leading to an overall sense of inconsistency.  The moments of touching beauty and joyful movement it sometimes creates stand in stark opposition to the frustration and confusion when play breaks down.  This juxtaposition doesn’t make SCHiM a failure, but it casts a shadow over the experience that’s hard to see past.

Rating: 6 out of 10

— Ryan Nalley

Disclosures: This game is developed by Ewoud va der Werf and published by Extra Nice.  It is currently available on PC, XBO, XBO/X/S, PS4/5 and Switch.  This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX.  Approximately 4 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E and contains Mild Violence.  The official description reads as follows:  This is an adventure platformer in which players assume the role of a shadow creature reconnecting with a character who has lost their shadow. From a ¾-overhead perspective, players explore city locations and interact with shadows/objects to solve puzzles. A handful of sequences depict characters in mild peril, including a child inside a burning building.

Colorblind Modes: There is not a labeled, official colorblind mode, however SCHiM allows players to customize every color on screen.  Each level is presented in a limited, high contrast color palette, and every color can be changed using a color wheel style mechanic. It should be noted that the color scheme changes with most levels and these settings are not pervasive.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is no spoken dialogue in the game, therefore there are no subtitle options. All audio cues are accompanied by a visual element, so this game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

Beneath The Mask Is A Good Game, Maybe?

GOOD Beautiful, well-crafted environments.

BAD Incessant narration every five seconds.

WTF Leaving the best feature until the end of the campaign.

I love a great lore-rich experience. It’s one of the main reasons why I love videogames like Elden Ring and Assassin’s Creed. But to support the weight of that storytelling, it needs a solid foundation based on interesting gameplay, mechanics and pacing. Astor: Blade of the Monolith is what happens when that foundation isn’t as strong as it should be.

Astor is a cartoony hack-and-slash title that tells a lore-rich, interesting story about the implications of humans creating artificial life, and how that life interacts with the natural world. Unfortunately, the message is often lost behind waves of mundane combat, mind-numbing narration, and boring traversal mechanics.

Things open with the titular character and his friend Zan exploring an ancient temple to find artifacts of the past. Astor and Zan are masked puppet-esque androids who live in a sprawling fantasy world that’s been long-abandoned by humans. Astor then falls through the temple floor, collects a mysterious artifact, gets a magic sword, and finds out that he is “The Chosen” — a special member of their species that was meant to overcome an insurmountable evil.

After a lengthy tutorial, I soon learned Astor is a Diokek — puppet androids created by the humans who are no longer in this world. The Diokek are locked in a constant battle with the Hiltsik, which are similar masked androids, but evil. Both of these factions derive from the Monolith, a tall structure of black stone that towers over the land in Astor and emanates with dark energy. Later, a town elder gives a typical cut-and-paste quest structure where Astor has to go through three trials and come out the other side somehow.

My next few hours of gameplay were spent looking at Astor‘s environments while learning the basic mechanics, and the art direction in Blade of the Monolith is a shining light in a sea of mediocrity. Every environment is crafted with the intent of being a wonder to behold, featuring sweeping vistas and beautiful colors.

Yet while there are countless wonderful environments to explore, there’s not a lot to do once Astor is in them. He’s either fighting the same band of enemies for the fifth time in a row, collecting haphazardly-scattered resources to upgrade his combat abilities, or walking to the next mission. This is compounded by the incredibly annoying narrator, who quite literally spells out every single thing that happens to Astor, not leaving an ounce of space for original thought from the player to interpret their surroundings.

This monotony is extremely evident in the first world, the desert, as I had no other means to get to a distant objective other than to walk. Eventually, Astor unlocks the ability to traverse the environment more easily, but I didn’t get this until two-thirds of the way through — one of many small tweaks that could be made to the pacing of Blade of the Monolith that would make it far more enjoyable.

Additional tweaks are needed in Astor’s combat. The game tries its best to emulate Devil May Cry-esque flurries of light, heavy, and special attacks, stringing them together in elaborate combos, but the execution is lacking. For example, I’d smack a normal enemy with the starting sword, and then it would fly back, yet I’d still be in the combo so Astor would do a weird glitch-jump to continue it. None of the attacks have synergy with any other, and combos feel janky.

Furthermore, this janky combat would often distract me from crucial story moments. I’d spend entire gameplay sections not remembering what happened in the plot because I was too focused on how jarring the combat was, all while the narrator was spewing words at me.

Eventually, the combat does begin to click, but it soon becomes more of a chore than anything else, and a lack of enemy level scaling makes the entire last third of the campaign a cakewalk — but there’s a hidden beauty in that. The story that I wasn’t paying attention to in the first two thirds was now my only focus, and when I wasn’t toiling through boring encounters or walking to my next mission, I began to appreciate the slightly deeper meaning of the story in Astor, which is passable, save for the narration.

There’s a good experience buried beneath all the issues in Astor: Blade of the Monolith, I think. There’s no reason why some reworking of the combat, reordering certain elements to speed up the pacing, and putting some duct tape over the narrator’s mouth wouldn’t do wonders, but in its current state these flaws are simply too glaring.

Rating: 4.5 out of 10

— Jack Dunn

Disclosures: The game was developed by C2 Game Studio and published by Versus Evil and tinyBuild. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5, Switch, and XBX/S. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 9 hours was devoted to the game, and it was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game has an ESRB rating of E for Fantasy Violence and Animated Blood. This is an action-adventure game in which players play as Astor, an android who goes on a quest to save his species from war with an evil faction of androids. Astor will get into sword combat with these evil androids, but these smaller fights have no blood and end in the enemies disappearing off the screen. A few of the boss fights have some animated blood in them, but it’s extremely few and far between. Outside of the combat, there is no violence in the game and it’s very tame in its themes.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind options.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game offers subtitles. Subtitles cannot be resized. There are no audio cues needed for successful gameplay. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The game features 4 preset controller settings, but no remappable controls.

Footsie

HIGH I just love the title.

LOW The boss fights.

WTF Kicking an anthropomorphized brain in the testicles.

Anger Foot isn’t subtle… though with a title like that, I don’t think anyone should expect nuance.

A bizarre ménage à trois between Hotline Miami, Boogerman and John Wick, Anger Foot is a first-person kicker/shooter that blends improvisational gunplay, high flying footwork and scatological humor. While it may not reach the heights of its inspirations (except for Boogerman — it’s definitely better than Boogerman) when it’s firing on all cylinders it can be a hell of a good time.

Planning a night in with his significant other, the titular Anger Foot’s plans are interrupted as gangs break in and steal his prized sneaker collection, and one can easily surmise that this is no laughing matter. Soon enough, I am storming through the apartments, sewers and nightclubs of Shit City (yes, that’s really what it’s called) in pursuit of my wayward footwear.

Who needs doorknobs when an angry foot will get the job done just as well? In lieu of a traditional “use” button, I can mash the “E” key to kick down doors and send adversaries flying. Grabbing limited-ammo guns as I go, a typical scene might have me draining the clip of a nearby machine gun before whipping it across the room to stun a bat-wielding, humanoid crocodile. I can then pivot and send a kick to the gut of what appears to be Grover from the wrong side of Sesame Street. As he sails through the air, grab his falling pistol and headshot the still-reeling crocodile.

Things move fast in Shit City, and death comes easy. While no level takes more than five minutes to complete, Anger Foot proves to be as fragile as the opposition, and his rage can be permanently calmed with a bullet or two. As such, it was rare that I could clear a stage on my first attempt, but blessedly short load times allow for rapid iteration, and there was a satisfaction in finding my perfect line through each map, slowly but surely landing every kick, headshot and jump, anticipating enemy movements and dancing my way to the exit.

This repetitious try-and-die nature of this design is clearly intentional. Completing each level under certain conditions unlocks stars that can be redeemed for new foot gear such as a new pair of stilettos, sandals or galoshes, each of which grants new abilities — things like making enemies explode when kicked, or enabling a double jump. Some are more context-specific, like granting immunity to fire — especially handy as the enemies up their arsenal to include flamethrowers in later stages. My personal favorite was a pair of sneakers that would slow down time when I kicked in a door.

Given levels’ general linearity, there is a surprising amount of room for player expression between alternate paths and the spontaneity of combat. Choosing when and where to pick up a shotgun versus a pistol, and when to send the empty gun flying across the room to stun an enemy is just as meaningful as which shoes I pick at the beginning of each stage. It feels as though I’m carving my own path through each area rather than following a prescripted route and method.

There’s also variety in the level design — in the first half of the campaign, at least. Starting out, each of Anger Foot’s stages feels as though it has a unique concept. In one, a sniper is perched and taking shots from afar – unable to reach my assailant, I must be in constant motion to avoid their aim. In another, I’m leaping across pipes in a cavernous sewer fighting an army of tentacles. With enemies being stationary, there is a clockwork, rhythmic precision to my movements as I take shots before they even appear, anticipating their presence.

Unfortunately, while I can clearly remember many of the early sections, later stages begin to feel more indistinct thanks to generic hallways and fewer mechanical differentiators as the developers come to rely more and more on the volume of enemies. There’s certainly an adrenaline rush in taking down a room of thirty foes, but Anger Foot loses the sense of flow and tempo that characterizes its first half.

Furthermore, the multi-phase boss battles that conclude each area feel out of place and frustrating. These fights, with an emphasis on timing and waiting for precise moments to attack, lose much of the dynamism that highlights the rest of the experience.  The worst offender introduces a mandatory parry mechanic, requires memorization of attack patterns, and takes place in a restrictive arena over toxic sludge where one small misstep means restarting the fight from the beginning.  These more prescriptive encounters seem to forget the fluid, freeform combat that made the preceding stages so engaging.

As mentioned earlier, there’s obviously an element of humor to the proceedings, and it doesn’t take long to realize that Anger Foot doesn’t take itself terribly seriously. However, beyond the baseline absurdity of the premise, the developers might be trying a bit too hard to make players laugh. I’m no stranger to puerile humor, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t crack a smile the first time I burst into a bathroom to find a surprised enemy, pixelated genitals and all. However, by the time I reached the end and had seen this same gag countless times, it began to lose its luster. Anger Foot is funny on a conceptual level, but the overt, repeated attempts at humor feel like selling past the close.

Anger Foot is at its best in motion. Falling into a hallway hypnosis of garish ’90s aesthetics and murderous footwork, I don’t have to think — I just react. It’s when I’m forced to slow down and hear a joke or fight a boss that requires pauses in the pace that I begin to notice the seams. While these moments aren’t dealbreakers, they’re unfortunate stumbles in an otherwise sure-footed experience.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

— Ryan Nalley

Disclosures: This game is developed by Free Lives and published by Devolver Digital. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC.
Approximately 10 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game
was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: While this game has not been rated by the ESRB, it is certainly not intended for younger audiences. Anger Foot contains violence, blood, sexuality, nudity, vaping and crude humor. While this content is presented in a cartoony manner, it is pervasive.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. Most audio cues have on-screen indicators. However, there are some enemy barks that can give away an enemy’s position that are not represented visually. Therefore, this game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.