Shadow Seeker is a survival horror game inspired by Resident Evil designed in RM2k3. It’s a lot different than the engine’s usual fare and wears its inspiration on its sleeve. The demo contains the first two chapters and there’s already a lot to see, but also room for refinement as well.

Let’s Talk About Assets!

I don’t know the ratio of ripped to custom, but the game comes together beautifully. Atmosphere is important for horror, and a great deal of care has been put into the environments to make it effective. It’s more than just dark rooms and spooky sounds. There are plenty of special effects in each area, like screen tints and overlays. Animated set pieces help bring the setting to life. It’s dismal, grim, and very evocative.

There’s good work done with character sprites as well. When you take damage, your walking sprite shows it. Monsters are handled via pictures, so their animations and behaviors are not restricted to the engine’s normal functions. On top of all that, there are some nice custom menus in place of the pause screen. Visually, it’s all quite impressive.

Music and sound are chosen appropriately. The former works with the sights to establish the dark mood while the latter offers a bit of realism through variety. In terms of presentation, it’s top notch.

Let’s Talk About Story!

There isn’t much to it yet, but the foundation has been laid. You’re a detective named Carlos Ramirez who was sent to investigate the murder of a family at their mansion. Accompanied by your partner, Carolina Flores, you investigate the place and find it infested with undead. Incriminating documents hint at what has led to this turn of events, and it’s up to the duo to uncover the seedy truth.

The writing is serviceable, but it isn’t exactly the focus. It’s a little better than the B-movie standards of most RE games. Dialogue is practical, but not especially characterizing. The same goes for the notes we find that build up the plot. It feels like the story is a vehicle for the game, but it’s doing what it needs to do so far.

Let’s Talk About Gameplay!

Although a great deal of attention has been paid to the game’s presentation, the mechanics have not been neglected. There are a lot of features employed through the use of numbers on the keyboard. I can’t speak for how this game feels to play using the number bar or pad, as I used a program to map them to a controller, but given my performance, I wouldn’t say this was much of an advantage.

While exploration and puzzle solving are pretty basic, it’s the combat mechanics that have been really fleshed out. It all happens on the map itself, so there’s no separate battle system. Your character can sprint, crouch, aim, attack, and dodge roll. Sprinting and rolling require stamina to use, and I couldn’t quite figure out exactly how the stamina meter works, but running out of it forces you to a crawl that can be devastating in a combat scenario. Crouching is used for exploration to fit into tight spaces, but it also has a battle application in that you can use it to dodge most attacks if you have good timing (I did not).

How you attack depends on what you have equipped. There’s a dedicated knife key that lets you swing for a weak hit. I wouldn’t call it reliable, but it does spare you from being helpless if you run out of ammo. In the demo, you can find a pistol, a shotgun, and a crowbar as other weapons. To attack with these, you must go into aiming mode first, which roots you in place so you can turn and shoot in any cardinal direction. This is actually a very handy feature, as it means you can aim and fire at a monster chasing you without having to take a step in its direction first. You can dodge roll out of aiming as long as you have the stamina, so it’s a safe technique that’s worth learning how to use.

However, not all is well on the battlefront. While thought has been put into how they are used, these mechanics can be difficult to work with. I’m tempted to say this is a skill issue on my part since I didn’t quite get the hang of it, but there were some scenarios where I felt like the mechanics were working against me. Most notable is that getting hurt while aiming turns off aiming mode, but the same key that turns it on also turns it back off. This resulted in me pressing the key to cancel aiming when a monster got too close, but getting hurt before I pressed it, thus causing me to turn aiming back on and leave me rooted in place next to a foe already on the assault. This could be alleviated by having a different key cancel aiming so there’s no confusion, but I could also have dodge rolled if it ever occurred to me.

It’s also worth noting that the enemy behavior isn’t so easy to read. Basic zombies are straightforward enough, but more complicated opponents are less predictable on the fly. I saw some enemies appear to teleport unintentionally, making them hard to evade or target. They also have some actions that are too quick to react to. Visual feedback is important and I think these foes need better tells for the player to respond effectively. RE may be the concept, but the author has said that Dark Souls is part of the inspiration, and the unforgiving combat is reflective of that. I only caution that this not be used as an excuse to leave the game hard if it’s that way for the wrong reasons (like my aiming issue above).

Apart from combat, inventory management is a real pain. It’s somewhat moot to bring up since a game-changing feature is already in the works, but your inventory is six slots and most of it will be occupied by weapons and ammo at all times. Between your two guns and their ammo types, your effective inventory is only two, and you often have puzzle items to cart around. This leaves one or no slots for other consumables like lock picks, stamina pills, and health recovery. If you’re too conservative with your stuff, you may have to waste some items to make room for necessities like puzzle objects.

The reason this is moot is because a drop box will eventually be implemented, allowing you to unload things you aren’t using and carry only what you feel you need. Even so, I think it would help if the inventory were eight or nine slots instead since the item variety expands quickly in chapter two. That may be too big of a request since the inventory screen is part of a custom menu that would need visually adjusted to fit more items.

Additional mechanics include an upgrade menu that offers perks for different play styles. There are several options per tier, but you can only get one from each, and this is done by spending spirit points. These are sometimes found by searching, but more often as random drops from enemies. Bosses are worth a lot no matter what, so you won’t be screwed if you don’t find enough off other foes. However, since there is no limit on saving at rest areas, you could game the system and keep killing monsters until they drop what you want, be it spirit points, ammo, or otherwise.

Let’s Wrap This Up…

This game is showing some real promise, but it will need to fine-tune its mechanics if it wants to be a tight experience. I’d say it’s on the right track so far, but I consider some of the troubles I had to be real issues. The addition of a drop box will help significantly, but certain aspects of combat definitely need a second look. As it is for now, I’d give it a...

3/5


Better learn some CQC.