My parents were fairly against us lending out NES games—and yes, we called them games. Not cassettes or tapes, maybe cartridges—but there was a family with whom we were "friends," and that was okay.
So, one title my father brought home one day after visiting his friend had the image of a gargoyle with its tail cracking open – or was it bleeding? – and he booted it up in the family room we had in the basement.
It scared the shit out of me.
But something about it intrigued me despite the nightmares it gave. The second-person dialogue inspired me to write my own little weird second-person stories in notebooks. The music infected my bones. We didn’t beat it before we gave it back, but in the years since, I have given Shadowgate a spin now and again simply because it still satisfies. I enjoyed the Zojoi remake, but it felt a little too new. Something about the static nature of those tiny 8-bit displays and the text descriptions of your death haunted me better.
So seeing the Beyond Shadowgate release (I missed the Kickstarter, but then again, after Might No. 9, I ignore Kickstarter) got me giddy. My son would be born soon, so I did the "bad boy" thing and waited for the Steam sale. Then, I played through it as quickly as a new parent can.
It was a delight.
Upfront, I’ll give two things I didn’t like about it.
- The stupid card game.
- One ending being locked out because I made a choice I didn’t even realize I made.
Early on, you have to "combat" an NPC by playing a "higher or lower" card game. If there is some trick to what is coming next because of his dialogue or something, I totally missed it. It felt random. It wasn’t fun selecting "High" or "Low" from the menu until it worked out five times. It was also early enough in the game that I could see people saying, "Fuck this." Maybe if some item or spell lets you see the next card and solve the puzzle that way, it would have worked. And perhaps it was in the game, and I missed it. But that sucked.
Last night, I got Ending C. Hmm. Not a great ending. How did I do that? Oh, I see. Okay. Try something else. Ending A. This feels bad, but A is the first ending, so is it the best? Let’s try one more thing. Aha! Ending B! This feels right. But it’s B? I guess it’s the best? It feels weird, but that is nit-picky. Okay, let’s see how I get this Ending D… I can’t figure it out. Whatever, end game, I’ll take a look at a guide.
Oh! So, since I did the thing that I thought was right – instead of taking a shortcut that wasn’t exactly obvious – I am locked out of the ending and need to replay. That’s kind of fine, I guess? But unless I missed some dialogue, I don’t see how that moment in the game ties to getting another ending. Unless it becomes clear when I do get that ending, that point was about halfway through the game, so it feels frustrating. It’s kind of like how, in Cave Story you completely change things by entering one room or not. Or failing to make a jump. Again, these things are neat conceptually but feel frustrating when you realize it later. Still, fun was had.
Speaking of entering a room or not! The game also has three segments out of the Shadowgate world proper, where you visit the worlds of Uninvited and Déjà Vu. These were neat. Turns out I missed one room in the Uninvited part, and so I couldn’t 100% the map for the achievement. I’m torn between not caring about achievements overall and being bugged by the fact that "Really, all I did was not enter a room that didn’t obviously become enterable at one point when I felt a sense of urgency to get the fuck out of where I was, and it is missable until another replay, where I have to get 100% in that to get the achievement?" If I gave a shit, I’d be furious.
But overall, it was a delight. I liked how there were still useless items (Or were they? I never found a use for them) and how the game discarded items when you were done with them (mostly conveniently having them break or whatever). This was nice because I didn’t have too many items to think about when it came to solving puzzles. It made inventory management feel much more manageable.
I’m glad I played it. If you have fond memories of the NES versions of the MacVenture games, you absolutely owe yourself the experience of going Beyond Shadowgate.