Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
Shadows are Alive is an interesting sort of mash-up of a lot of fairly popular titles coming together to create a pretty solid premise. A weird mix of Player vs. Player, puzzle solving, and exploration in a randomly generated map provide a pretty good base to work off of. While the game is currently riddled with bugs in the Early Access state, it shows a lot of promise. Let's jump in and take a look at a preliminary viewing for Shadows are Alive.
The basic premise of Shadows are Alive is that a group of kids are trying to escape an evil entity, referred to as The Shift. Whether the kids are escaping a mansion or a carnival, they will need to perform certain tasks while evading capture in order to escape. The Shift, meanwhile, is trying to hunt down and capture the kids. In its current state, Shadows are Alive is an up to five person game, where up to four can be different kids trying to escape, and one can be The Shift. Those who are familiar with Dead by Daylight will see a number of similarities in this title.
Where Shadows are Alive deviates from the usual however is in the escape methods. The kids have to perform a series of tasks in a randomly generated map in order to escape. Sometimes this could be finding a certain room, or performing a certain action. Other times you could be required to collect items and use them in a certain manner. It's kind of like Pacify or Devour meets Dead by Daylight, you could say.
Now, while the game is up to five people, at the moment you don't need that many. You can technically play by yourself as long as you're "ready" in a lobby and nobody else is there. Yup, whether or not it's intended, you can play either by yourself or without The Shift, where your goal would just be to escape. I'd actually suggest this as a starting game because some of the tasks can be a little vague.
So, let's assume you have both a Shift and a team of kids playing: what do they do? Let's start with the Shift first. Their goal is to capture the kids. This is done by using abilities, attacking them, or staying in their general vicinity and scaring them. Essentially the kids have a "fear" bar which builds when something spooky happens to them. Once it's full, they get knocked down for a period of time, and the Shift can teleport them into cages. Once all the kids are captured, The Shift heads over to the cages to sacrifice their souls, or something like that. The Shift has four abilities to help find the kids, and can phase through doors. The Shift cannot, however, actually see the kids. As the Shift you can only see lights that glow brighter or not at all depending on the state of the kids. If they are running, you can see a small light pillar. If they are sneaking, you can't see them at all unless you use an ability that is on a decently long cooldown. If they have been downed due to fear, there are some faint lights you can see.
The kids on the other hand must evade the Shift. Each kid has their own set of abilities to help them out, such as night-vision, a trap they can put down, or the ability to warp through large mirrors. The kids will be given tasks one at a time leading up to an escape method. There are seven tasks, some broken up into smaller components, and need to be completed in order to open up the escape route. Once someone enters the exit, everyone else has a minute to escape. As the kids, everything is a lot darker than when playing as The Shift. You have a lantern to help out, and it'll help reduce the fear gauge, but it has limited fuel and can run out. There are items scattered around the map you can pick up, such as food to help reduce fear, or fuel canisters for your lamp.
I do have to say, it was actually rather fun to grab a few friends and just work through the puzzles/exploration, even if there weren't a Shift hunting us down. Oddly enough, playing the game with someone acting as the Shift was...rather a mixed bag. This brings us to the most important issue plaguing Shadows are Alive: the ridiculous number of bugs and glitches. Buckle up, cuz there's a lot. Thankfully the game is still Early Access, so there's room for improvement before a full release, and there have been a few updates addressing some things, so I'm really hoping the current issues get addressed.
First up is the vision difficulty. While the stage is dark, the problem tends more towards issues in tight spaces, especially as the firefighter. The bulky helmet gets in the way of your vision, making it tough to see what's around you. It's also rather difficult to see an interact prompt some of the time, although there was a patch that I feel helped improve this, so that's a positive improvement. Another big issue is in regards to certain interactions. If you are interacting with an object and trying to move, your character will move while you're zoomed in on an object. Sometimes this can cause some serious issues. As an example, during our first game, when one of us tried to do a task involving a fuse box, they got kicked off, and the fuse box was no longer able to be interacted with, preventing us from completing the task and winning the game. Additionally, sometimes the task bar completion level wouldn't accurately reflect the task completion rate, causing a lot of confusion. The latter issue I believe has been addressed at the time of writing, but more testing should probably be done to confirm.
There is a scenario where you can crash the game at the moment, and that's related to the lobby. If you create and back out of a lobby, you can have parts of both lobby joining and creating screens on at the same time. You need to close and then reopen the game to resolve this. Additionally, while in a lobby the "ready" sign will stay above your head, even if you "unready". You can also start the game like this, except anyone "unready" will be stuck on the loading screen with a controls prompt and need to force close the game.
In terms of other game breaking bugs, there is a stupidly high tendency to get stuck on the environment. If you're playing as a kid, you can ask the Shift to come down to you and kidnap you, then let someone rescue you to get back into things. Which isn't that hard, considering the Shift can also hear and talk to you through the in-game proxy voice chat. A weird design choice (maybe) that I suppose is rather realistic from a technical perspective. I kinda liked it, to be honest. Unfortunately if you get stuck as the Shift, you have no way of getting out of it and have to either quit the game or let the kids win.
Now, let's go over some of the weird but non game breaking issues. First up, getting out of bounds is really easy. Sometimes you can clip through the environment, sometimes there's a random door in the mansion that leads out into the void. Now, the reason this isn't game breaking is because the developers had some forethought and made it so that if you drop off the map, you just get warped back to the foyer/entrance. A rather smart design choice I can appreciate. Next up we've got the weird Shift winning glitch. So, it turns out that when you kidnap a kid as the Shift, they're still downed for a period of time, meaning you can "catch them" again while they're already in a cage. If you do this, you can trick the game into thinking you've caught more kids than you have, especially if they're all downed, meaning the Shift can win without actually capturing all the kids.
Other than that, it would be nice to be able to remain in a lobby after completing a round instead of getting booted to the beginning menu. On the plus side, it's after the initial cutscene, which despite the game saying you can skip, three out of the five of us who played could not skip it. Weird, but I don't even know what could reasonably cause that.
There are also a few issues on the other available map, the circus. This map is a little different, as the goal is to play games, win stuffed animals, trade them for tickets, and then ride some of the rides to fill a happiness gauge in order to escape. A lot of minigame type things. First issue I noticed is that the minigames to play are a little temperamental. Of the three I played, only one would actually dole out a reward, which the other players found the same issue, although for different games. Secondly, the indication of what you're supposed to do is a little vague, although the devs should be addressing this, so hopefully by the time this preview goes live it'll no longer be an issue. Finally, there's a part of the carnival you can enter to shrink, and when you leave you're supposed to unshrink. I didn't, which resulted in some hilarity, but didn't actually impact gameplay at all, so I suppose that's a little more acceptable?
Despite the decently large swathe of concerns, me and the rest of the gang I played with actually had a lot of fun. It's janky, it doesn't always work right, but it's nailed all of the basis for what could turn out to be something really cool. We're all looking forward to watching Shadows are Alive continue to improve, and would really like to see the new maps that are being worked. Keep an eye out for Shadows are Alive, and maybe give it a shot even while Early Access after a few more bug fixes get introduced. I know I will be keeping an eye on it!
Nemonic:
When getting into the rhythm of playing the game, it was actually starting to be fun, until we were trying to figure out all the glitches we were running into. There was too many times when I or anyone in the team would try to save someone and somehow The Shift would win the game (with no explanation on how). And when trying to look it up in the game on how The Shift was suppose to operate and win, there was no information on it. Or when some of the perks for characters were not working, like unlocking locks with the Lockpicking girl. Just a lot of running into glitches overall that made it hard to enjoy the game. That being said I do see potential in this game being a fun 1v4 for friends to play with.
Goober:
Shadows are Alive is yet another stab at the 4v1 Multiplayer genre or "dead by daylight likes" out there. While the game itself has promise, as it stands right now, it needs some more time in the oven to fully flesh out that promise. I do however like the art style of the playable kids and The "Shift" looks cool as well. The game also has a lot of bugs currently from getting stuck on the clutter on the ground, finding doors that lead out of the map (they have a failsafe as it spawns you in the main room if this happens) they even put a sign out there. The second mode where you are in a carnival trying to win prizes is fun and has some cool minigames for the kids to play. I like the game but it needs more work. Being able to customize the color of your lantern is cool, the individual powers for the kids are pretty cool and can be used strategically. From the looks of it they plan to add more Kids and more monsters to play as, so in the future that'll be interesting to see what new designs and "powers" they come up with for each character and monster.
Snowy:
Shadows are alive has the bones of a great asymmetrical horror game. However, bugs and teams not being properly balanced steals the fun and frights from the gameplay. The power imbalance between the factions makes winning as a kid improbable. Level objectives, while mostly clear for the kids, are lacking for the shadow characters. Combining that with a buggy game leads to the shadow winning for no reason.
Overall Summary:
Shadows are Alive shows a lot of really good promise, but still has a lot of bugs and kinks to work out, as well as some balancing issues. The developers seem to have a good grasp on what they want to make, they just need some time to get everything working how they envision.
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