Shadowgate

aka: Behemoth, Shadowkeep
Moby ID: 1070
Macintosh Specs
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Description official descriptions

Using the same graphical interface as Deja Vu, Shadowgate is an adventure game set in a fantasy world. Players take the part of an adventurer sent to the ancient keep of Shadowgate on a quest to find a mystic artifact known as the Staff of Ages and stop the evil Warlock Lord from summoning a horrific demon known as the Behemoth. However, Shadowgate has become infested with the Warlock Lord's demonic minions, not to mention the castle's still functional booby-traps.

Unlike Deja Vu, death comes at the protagonist suddenly, unexpectedly and, most of all, often. Such simple acts as pulling the wrong switch or opening the wrong door can cause the hero to be skewered by a booby-trap or disemboweled by a monster. If the player character's torch burns out (this happens quite regularly) and the player forgets to light a new one, the protagonist will trip in the dark and break his neck.

Spellings

  • ă‚·ăƒŁăƒ‰ă‚Šă‚Čă‚€ăƒˆ - Japanese spelling

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Critics

Average score: 75% (based on 36 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 81 ratings with 6 reviews)

A very good adventure game that takes advantage of the Amiga's capabilities

The Good
Shadowgate was an unique adventure game by ICOM Simulators released in 1987. While most adventure games at the time were text only (Lucasfilm's games aside), it was one of the first games to feature a mouse-driven interface already present in DĂ©jĂ  Vu, the company's first game released two years before for the Macintosh. I am reviewing the Amiga version, which I am most impressed with.

The game starts with the player standing outside the castle. There is a good reason for this. Lakmir, the good wizard, needs him to venture into the castle so that he can banish the evil Warlock Lord, who threatens to raise the Behemoth, the deadliest of Titans, from the depths of the Earth.

You start out the game with a flaming torch in your inventory, and there is a reason why you are carrying this. It will go out any minute, and you don't have long to find another torch and light that one and drop the burnt-out torch. To me, this seems like a sub-objective, if you can call it that. If you happen to run out of torches, it will become dark and you will soon fall to your death if you try to do anything else. You will have no problem trying to avoid blackouts, as long as you use the torches sparingly.

Everything is presented in their own separate windows that can be moved around and manipulated, just like Workbench. This means you can select one or more inventory items by dragging a box around them, and placing them anywhere on the main screen. The ability to drop multiple inventory items means that you waste little time and avoid blackouts. There are various commands at your disposal, and these commands take some getting used to. Of these, the SPEAK command is rarely used, and it is not to command a door to “open sesame”. The GO command can be used to go from one room to another (providing that you OPEN the door first), but I find it more easy to double-click on the exit.

There are many hidden creatures scattered around the castle, and they eventually reveal themselves if you try to take an item out of the same room as they are. Chances are that you need that item later, so you have to deal with these creatures. In one occasion, you can't take the platinum horn without dealing with a demon dog. This is not unexpected, as there are certainly many other creatures from other adventure games of its time.

As I said in the summary, Shadowgate takes full advantage of the Amiga's capabilities. The hand-painted backgrounds look good, and the animations are nicely done. There are some amazing sound effects, with my favorite being scream that you emit when you fall down a trap door if you try to take forbidden items. There is some background music, and the ending is much more satisfying. (You even get to print out a winning certificate, which is well designed.)


The Bad
The main problem with Shadowgate concerns its inventory. Once your inventory happens to be full, then if you try to pick any more items, you are greeted with the annoying “You can't take that” message. It's frustrating that I try to pick up something that I want, then try to drop as many useless items no matter how large or small it is, only to find out that it isn't enough. So my best option was to leave almost my entire inventory behind and come back for some things later, knowing them I just wasted enough light for doing so.

The Bottom Line
Shadowgate is a very good adventure game for its time, with its notable features beating those Lucasfilm games by two years. The game takes full advantage of the Amiga's capabilities. The graphics and sound is great, and whatever music there is, it is brilliantly composed. If you like good adventure games, then you have to play this.

Amiga · by Katakis | ă‚«ă‚żă‚­ă‚č (43092) · 2015

Kill me once, then kill me twice, then kill me once again.

The Good
The graphics and music/sound in Shadowgate are of very high quality, given the limitations of the NES. Unlike Microsoft Windows Help, the built-in hint system here is actually helpful (but only sometimes).

As for the substance of the game, I have to admit that some of the writing is pretty clever, and even funny at times. This is a non-action, slow-paced game, which is quite unusual for an old console title. My guess is that mostly oldschool PC gamers will like Shadowgate, but oldschool console gamers looking for something different than the typical arcade fare may also enjoy it.

The Bad
Shadowgate is remarkable for its sheer existentialism. Traditional adventure games either try to amuse the player, or frighten him with death; Shadowgate actually tries to amuse the player with death! If your sense of humor tends strongly to the dark and ironic side, then some of the text in this game will probably strike you as downright hilarious.

This is one of the strengths of the game, but it’s also a weakness. You have to die CONSTANTLY, even if you are playing pretty smart, which can be extremely frustrating. If those witty little post-mortem messages don’t do it for you, then you are going to get tired of this game really fast.

In fact, “frustration” would be this game’s middle name, if it only had one. Some of the clues given by the game are rather unhelpful, and occasionally they can even be downright misleading. Puzzle solutions are generally only logical when viewed after-the-fact. You see, there is one and only one solution to every problem, so it’s all about getting into the heads of the designers, and not about logical thinking. I mainly got through Shadowgate through sheer trial-and-error, which has a way of sucking all the fun out of a game.

If there was more substance to this game, then the “puzzle” aspect wouldn’t be that big of a problem. But there is practically no story here whatsoever! It’s really just a bunch of puzzles loosely tied together in a sequence. To top things off, the game isn’t even user-friendly. Torch management is a royal pain, especially since you have no idea how many there are in total in the castle. The menu system feels very clunky, too. It’s enough to make you welcome death with a smile. I guess that’s appropriate, since that seems to be the underlying message of the game, anyway


The Bottom Line
If you want a challenging puzzle-adventure for your NES, this is a good place to start. Watch what you wish for, though. Shadowgate may give you more old-fashioned, point-and-click frustration than you bargained for.

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STINGER
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“As you go down the trap door, you realize you took a big step. The fall is quite fatal."

NES · by PCGamer77 (3158) · 2011

Early dungeon point and click puzzler, a little "mature"

The Good
For better or worse, it was more linear than previous ICOM point and click games. Still had you walking on eggshells though. I don't believe there are any real-time, arcade battles, you defeat monsters, ghosts etc. by hitting them with the right object from your (limited)inventory, much like say King's Quest. It's interesting how you find a sword in a locked cupboard just inside the castle, but it's barely useful for anything. So it's an interesting "pick the right object, choose the right path" sort of game with some nice, atmospheric graphics and scary death scenes. And there was one particular secret path that I thought was cleverly hidden.

The Bad
Like I said, you're walking on eggshells. If you forget to light another torch before your's goes out, you're dead. There are a lot of false moves resulting in death. Standard for ICOM games I suppose. It's learn by death.

The Bottom Line
I'm sure I completed the Game Boy version of this game in 2001 without help, but it took a long time. I don't really believe in making such sacrifices for games anymore. I gave up on this version maybe just over half way through, after deciding that the removing the game's obstacles relied too much on random, try anything, experimentation. It's not really a game which you can appreciate for the logic put into the puzzles. Sometimes even if it takes ages to solve a puzzle, or you have to look up the solution, you can respect the challenge and see it as worthwhile. In other games though, not necessarily in this one.

If you're interested in early point and click though i.e ICOM, this game is decent enough and I think more enjoyable than the DĂ©ja Vu games.

Macintosh · by Andrew Fisher (697) · 2018

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Trivia

Inform port

Programmer David Griffith re-implemented an entirely text-only port of this game in Inform, available (with source!) at his website, reviewed in SPAG #36.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Alan Chan.

Amiga, Windows 3.x added by POMAH. Nintendo 3DS added by GTramp. NES added by PCGamer77. Apple IIgs added by Eli Tomlinson. Macintosh added by Pseudo_Intellectual. Atari ST added by Belboz.

Additional contributors: Apogee IV, Pseudo_Intellectual, Havoc Crow, Thomas Thompson, David Griffith, Rodney Fisk.

Game added March 17, 2000. Last modified March 22, 2024.