I knew that while I was at the show, I needed to take a look at Hudson's Lost in Shadow. Originally impressed by its look and basic concept, I've been watching the little tidbits of information with interest for quite some time, wondering how it worked in more detail. At one point, I found out that the creative mind behind the game was none other than Osamu Tsuchihashi of Kororinpa fame, which got me interested even more.
My list grew ever-longer as the show approached. I accumulated appointments to be shown what seemed like every game but this one. And then, when I had a little bit of a break between appointments on day two, I spotted it perched on the edge of Hudson parent Konami's booth, shining like a beacon. I walked over and watched for a moment as another attendee worked his way through the first level and left, then jumped in myself.
I found myself returning to that station more times than I could count over the next days.
Lost in Shadow finds you, the shadow of a young boy, climbing a tall tower to hopefully be reunited with your body. Along the way, you'll find little memories, which increase your shadow's "weight"; these have a practical purpose, as I'll explain in a bit, but I particularly liked how some of them started to tell the boy's story as he went along. It took a few moments to focus myself on the shadows in the background instead of the objects in the foreground that cast them, but once I did I really started to appreciate the little bits of creative expression that went into creating the shadow world—for example, a little bit of fence, with the light shining on it in the right way, would become a foreboding pit of spikes rising up between the platform-shadows cast by a few arches. The agile shadow-boy, who you control with the Nunchuk, can jump over these with the A button.
Of course, it's not just static elements that make Lost in Shadow great; it's the myriad ways the game turns the real-world elements of the tower into something completely other by way of their shadows. The shadow-boy is accompanied by the shadow of a winged sylph named Spangle who follows your Wii Remote pointer around. Spangle becomes the player's hand in the game, manipulating the world and the light that shines on it to clear the way for the shadow-boy to press onward.
Early on in the game you'll use her to locate and activate giant mechanisms, swinging arms around to create platforms as well as rotating giant turbines that the boy can ride the shadows of to get higher and lower. Finding these objects is done by pointing your Remote at the screen and holding B, which makes Spangle search; once she finds something she locks on to it automatically. (Which objects are manipulatable is typically fairly clear contextually, and just in case they aren't, they seem to have a very slight sparkle to them.) Once locked on, another tap of B will manipulate the object. This was used in these early levels not just to progress, but also so the boy could reach and disable "monitor eyes," which he needed to do three of in some levels in order to progress beyond a shadow wall at the end.
But simple manipulations like that are only the beginning. I saw a lot in the around ten levels of the demo I played. (There were a lot of levels available; far more than I expected from a floor demo. At one point, I asked the producer if I was in danger of spoiling myself for the real game if I played too much; he reassured me that there was a lot more yet to go than was available on the floor.) In one area, there was a hanging lamp that I could set to swinging, which made the shadows of the stationary scenery sway, so I could jump up on an previously-inaccessible high platform and ride it over to the right. In another, I used Spangle to manipulate an on-screen slider, which appeared in a context-sensitive fashion, to reposition the light source and make the shadow-platforms align themselves in helpful ways. A handful of challenge rooms that I warped to upon entering certain arches revolved around twisting the foreground objects around to create shadows I could use to reach the top—but twisting them the wrong way could crush the boy between the shadows of the objects he was trying to climb.
My list grew ever-longer as the show approached. I accumulated appointments to be shown what seemed like every game but this one. And then, when I had a little bit of a break between appointments on day two, I spotted it perched on the edge of Hudson parent Konami's booth, shining like a beacon. I walked over and watched for a moment as another attendee worked his way through the first level and left, then jumped in myself.
I found myself returning to that station more times than I could count over the next days.
Lost in Shadow finds you, the shadow of a young boy, climbing a tall tower to hopefully be reunited with your body. Along the way, you'll find little memories, which increase your shadow's "weight"; these have a practical purpose, as I'll explain in a bit, but I particularly liked how some of them started to tell the boy's story as he went along. It took a few moments to focus myself on the shadows in the background instead of the objects in the foreground that cast them, but once I did I really started to appreciate the little bits of creative expression that went into creating the shadow world—for example, a little bit of fence, with the light shining on it in the right way, would become a foreboding pit of spikes rising up between the platform-shadows cast by a few arches. The agile shadow-boy, who you control with the Nunchuk, can jump over these with the A button.
Of course, it's not just static elements that make Lost in Shadow great; it's the myriad ways the game turns the real-world elements of the tower into something completely other by way of their shadows. The shadow-boy is accompanied by the shadow of a winged sylph named Spangle who follows your Wii Remote pointer around. Spangle becomes the player's hand in the game, manipulating the world and the light that shines on it to clear the way for the shadow-boy to press onward.
Early on in the game you'll use her to locate and activate giant mechanisms, swinging arms around to create platforms as well as rotating giant turbines that the boy can ride the shadows of to get higher and lower. Finding these objects is done by pointing your Remote at the screen and holding B, which makes Spangle search; once she finds something she locks on to it automatically. (Which objects are manipulatable is typically fairly clear contextually, and just in case they aren't, they seem to have a very slight sparkle to them.) Once locked on, another tap of B will manipulate the object. This was used in these early levels not just to progress, but also so the boy could reach and disable "monitor eyes," which he needed to do three of in some levels in order to progress beyond a shadow wall at the end.
But simple manipulations like that are only the beginning. I saw a lot in the around ten levels of the demo I played. (There were a lot of levels available; far more than I expected from a floor demo. At one point, I asked the producer if I was in danger of spoiling myself for the real game if I played too much; he reassured me that there was a lot more yet to go than was available on the floor.) In one area, there was a hanging lamp that I could set to swinging, which made the shadows of the stationary scenery sway, so I could jump up on an previously-inaccessible high platform and ride it over to the right. In another, I used Spangle to manipulate an on-screen slider, which appeared in a context-sensitive fashion, to reposition the light source and make the shadow-platforms align themselves in helpful ways. A handful of challenge rooms that I warped to upon entering certain arches revolved around twisting the foreground objects around to create shadows I could use to reach the top—but twisting them the wrong way could crush the boy between the shadows of the objects he was trying to climb.