The Shadowgate series is rather strange. While they all have a strong focus on puzzles, they like to be different styles. The original was a point and click adventure that was heavy on text, with a small window to show what you were seeing. The sequel, Beyond Shadowgate on the TurboGrafx CD was in a style much closer to Monkey Island. There’s also a VR game that’s much more action orientated.

A remake of Shadowgate kept the original style, just in higher detail, while a new version of Beyond Shadowgate is being developed in the 8-bit style of the remaster, using original design documents but ignoring the TurboGrafx version.

Shadowgate 64 is still a point & click style adventure, but with a fully explorable 3D environment and controls similar to first person shooter games. You play as a halfling in a fantasy land, as your caravan gets attacked and you get thrown into a prison, where it’s up to you to figure out a way out before being given a grand task.

The lore in all the books you can find is great, many of which you’ll need to read for the puzzles, but the environment it self is rather drab, mainly consisting of small, generic rooms. It’s a shame as a bit of colour and some grander looking places would have massively helped the atmosphere.

The puzzles are rather mixed. The biggest problem is a complete lack of HUD. While this looks nice, it also means that nothing is ever highlighted, so one major difficulty is simply finding objects. In once of the many instances I looked up a guide, it turned out that there was a key behind a pillar. Even knowing that, it was difficult to find, as it just looked like part of the floor texture – and I’m seeing it much clearer than anyone would have done when the game came out. There are times you also need to be very precise with your aiming, as you may be slightly off and get a “nothing important is here” kind of message and dismiss the object as background scenery. On top of that, there are a ton of objects that are never used.

Other puzzles are trial and error, and a lot of objects are nowhere near where they’re actually used. Some stuff you collect early on isn’t used until the very end of the game. Thankfully, there seem to be no point in the game where you’re completely screwed, you can always explore previous places to find what items you need (although sometimes it’s just a case of grabbing everything and trying it. There’s also a really annoying maze sections with lots of buttons, and having to walk back the way you came because it suddenly goes somewhere different.

There are things to like about Shadowgate, and it seems like it would be a good game for fans of the point & click adventures where you just have to find every object on every thing you can interact with (although the lack of HUD means you have to try everything, as you don’t know what you can interact with), but it really needed a bit more to help with the atmosphere of the game, to make it feel more alive.

Fine

Sigh. We follow this game for months and months in RPG News, and then all we get is a game worthy of the pitiful score you’ve already peeked at in the bottom corner of this page. And the reason for this? Shadowgate seems to believe that the player will enjoy a significant amount of time trudging up and down endless, indistinguishable grey and brown corridors. Very slowly. Whilst scouring and picking up every object in every room. Shadowgate is, simply, very dull.

Jes Bickham, N64 Magazine #31. Review Score: 43%

Remake or remaster?

A remastered version would be make the game nicer to play, increasing walking speed, adding more detail and colour and some HUD and hints.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Shadowgate 64: Trials of the Four Towers