Note: I played this as part of my attempt to get at least a first impression of every unplayed game in my steam library. As such, this review is just based on the first impression.

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I own Shadowgrounds because the developer made Nine Parchments, one of my favourite games of all time. After playing that I bought a bundle of their games, but the only game I tried out in that bundle was Trine and it didn't interest me much. Shadowgrounds was one of the games that just got completely missed as a result.

Looks like quite an old game! It's a top-down shooter, where you move the mouse left and right to rotate left/right and arrow keys to go forward, back, or strafe. I thought that was going to make controlling the character quite awkward, but they actually felt quite intuitive and I got the hang of it very quickly. It's quite difficult to miss with a lot of the monsters, because they're quite large, so that helped a bit too. Combat was quite simple, but fun; there's dodge-roll which feels good to use, your flashlight can be used to scare away smaller enemies but has limited battery (although the battery seems to last a very long time and recharges when you don't use it, so I found there wasn't really a reason not to just have it permanently on in combat), and there's a range of weapons which you unlock as you go. The basic pistol and the rifle didn't feel all that special, but I think that helped the shotgun feel great in comparison - it was quite a fun moment using it for the first time and just having the enemy be blasted backward by the force of it.

I having a feeling that the difficulty I played on, Normal, might stealthily make it difficult for you to die. You can lose health very quickly, but a lot of the times I was on low health I would somehow end up surviving without losing any more, despite not really changing my gameplay a ton. But honestly, I only really noticed how much stuff should have hit me when I was skimming through the video, and while I was playing it felt tense and exciting, so I'll give it a pass on this. I imagine you can turn up the difficulty if you don't want that, anyway.

Story was kind of interesting. It's nothing to write home about, at least as far as I got - facility on a moon base gets overrun by alien monsters coming out of the water - but the voice acting was generally good and added a fair bit. There's a lot of logs that give exposition hidden out of the way, which I'm always a fan of, but there was never anything unexpected in them. Maybe it gets better as the game goes on? I'm not sure.

Overall, thumbs up from me, and I think this might be one I come back to. The gameplay was fun, and I am kind of intrigued to see where the story goes!

Note: I played this as part of my attempt to get at least a first impression of every unplayed game in my steam library. As such, this review is just based on the first impression. ---------- I own Shadowgrounds because the developer made Nine Parchments, one of my favourite games of all time. After playing that I bought a bundle of their games, but the only game I tried out in that bundle was Trine and it didn't interest me much. Shadowgrounds was one of the games that just got completely missed as a result. Looks like quite an old game! It's a top-down shooter, where you move the mouse left and right to rotate left/right and arrow keys to go forward, back, or strafe. I thought that was going to make controlling the character quite awkward, but they actually felt quite intuitive and I got the hang of it very quickly. It's quite difficult to miss with a lot of the monsters, because they're quite large, so that helped a bit too. Combat was quite simple, but fun; there's dodge-roll which feels good to use, your flashlight can be used to scare away smaller enemies but has limited battery (although the battery seems to last a very long time and recharges when you don't use it, so I found there wasn't really a reason not to just have it permanently on in combat), and there's a range of weapons which you unlock as you go. The basic pistol and the rifle didn't feel all that special, but I think that helped the shotgun feel great in comparison - it was quite a fun moment using it for the first time and just having the enemy be blasted backward by the force of it. I having a feeling that the difficulty I played on, Normal, might stealthily make it difficult for you to die. You can lose health very quickly, but a lot of the times I was on low health I would somehow end up surviving without losing any more, despite not really changing my gameplay a ton. But honestly, I only really noticed how much stuff should have hit me when I was skimming through the video, and while I was playing it felt tense and exciting, so I'll give it a pass on this. I imagine you can turn up the difficulty if you don't want that, anyway. Story was kind of interesting. It's nothing to write home about, at least as far as I got - facility on a moon base gets overrun by alien monsters coming out of the water - but the voice acting was generally good and added a fair bit. There's a lot of logs that give exposition hidden out of the way, which I'm always a fan of, but there was never anything unexpected in them. Maybe it gets better as the game goes on? I'm not sure. Overall, thumbs up from me, and I think this might be one I come back to. The gameplay was fun, and I am kind of intrigued to see where the story goes!