More info on the game

Mechanics

So, we hope you have already played the After Shadows' demo (again, we remind you that the demo does not yet have controller support; in the release it will, of course). If you have done this, discuss your experience in the comments.

There are several points that are important to clarify.

After Shadows is a metroidvania. In the best traditions of metroidvania the game consists of one very large and complicated location. The demo shows us about one quarter of this location and, believe me, this is the easiest part of it.

The game point is in the passage through this large and complicated location. Even if you complete the game, charge all the crystals, get to the Tree and receive a gift from it, with a new game you will find yourself at the same location. Your task is to explore it properly, learn how to dodge Dark Monster, foresee traps and find the best way.

The gifts from the Tree are artifacts that make your progress easy. If you fail and die, you will receive a curse that will make your life harder at the next replay.

The replay cycle is not infinite. The finale, which depends on how successful your attempts were, will come, sooner or later. At the very best the Tree will give you the cure for Ana and Lipsy's mother. Perhaps this will happen after the first successful play, but don't count on that too much — the probability is so small that if this happens, we earnestly advise you to buy a lottery ticket on the same day — such luck shouldn't be missed.

In general, there will be four alternative game endings. We won't tell about them, it's an intrigue. It depends only on you, your memory, spatial reasoning, and ingenuity, how much time it will take to explore the location completely.

The location is not large — it's huge! A full exploration of all its corridors, cubbyholes, portals and traps can take several dozen of hours and hundreds of replays. You can always get to any game point at least in two ways, find them all and choose the best one for yourself.

You will be able to play from the start to the Tree without mistakes for a few minutes, sooner or late, but, believe me, you'll have to try very hard, exploring, making mistakes, dying and reborning in new replays.