ShadowForce

ShadowForce is a shareware graphic adventure game. The story is set in the early 22nd century, when Earth Central Command, a world government body that succeeded the United Nations, establishes a special operations unit, the eponymous ShadowForce, to combat anarchy, chaos and corruption in the wake of a global crisis. This team of four "enhanced humanoids" becomes mankind's last hope when it faces new, unprecedented threats to its existence, such as a rampant AI or an alien invasion.

The player's goal is to guide the ShadowForce team through three missions: Rise of the Overlord, GateKeeper and The Final Paradox. Only the first mission is available in the shareware version of the game. The game is played from the first-person perspective, with static images of each scene the characters find themselves in. Each scene has a text description, and many other events in the game are also presented as text messages.

Movement and combat is turn-based, and interaction with the game world is accomplished through a mouse-controlled interface. The gameplay primarily consists of solving puzzles by manipulating items found throughout the game environment, and combat encounters. Occasionally it is also needed to talk to certain non-player characters by typing in keywords to elicit various responses from them. While there is no flow of real time, in some of the phases of the game the player is only able to take a limited number of turns before a certain event happens. Overall, ShadowForce places a greater emphasis on puzzle-solving, however combat also requires the players to cautiously think out their moves, as ammunition and health packs are rather limited.