You’ll rarely sit still in Cyber Shadow due to the number of enemies and how they synergize with the environment. The enemy design feels precise and deliberate, designed to challenge the player and force them to improve and learn without aggravating too much.
THE MESSENGER VS CYBER SHADOW HOW TO
Like the best action-platformers, there’s a distinct rhythm to the level design, and much of the fun comes from figuring out how to get through a given section while taking as little damage as possible. If nothing else, the game is proof that great pixel art never goes out of style. This isn’t a point against the game, of course, and the lack of punishment is nice because I can already tell that this game is going to get tough.
Even Shovel Knight had a Souls-esque mechanic where you had to recover some of your gold if you died. Strangely, as far as I can tell, there’s no penalty for dying apart from being sent back to your most recent checkpoint. So far as I can tell, this is the only thing to spend your currency on, but the regeneration definitely comes in handy.
THE MESSENGER VS CYBER SHADOW UPGRADE
Checkpoints are fairly generous, and you gain the ability to upgrade them to include things like health and special ammo regeneration. Like Shovel Knight, Cyber Shadow doesn’t penalize players too much for death, which is just as well considering the number of spike pits and bottomless falls it throws at you. By the end, I had to carefully time my jumps with the falling blocks, and coming out successfully felt great. This is introduced early on so players can get used to it before it ties directly into the core platforming. For instance, in chapter two, which occurs in a factory-like setting, blocks are constantly falling from dispensers on the ceiling. Even from the early stages, Cyber Shadow is unafraid of really sticking it to players, with each section introducing some new mechanic. Of course, the level design is the real star of the show. It’d be a neat twist on the straightforward action-platformer gameplay, and it’s something I’m looking forward to seeing more of. I’ll fully admit that I haven’t seen much of the pre-release marketing, so I apologize if this is a spoiler of some sort, but I wonder if the game will have multiple endings depending on how you fight the end of chapter bosses. Doing this proves relatively easy, but the boss directly addressed this course of action after the fight, calling me a coward and saying that the rest of the ninja tribe would never resort to something as lowly as backstabbing. I will admit, I was enticed by something the game did with the first chapter’s boss it was a cyborg that shoots energy blasts across the screen, with an easy trick being the ability to jump behind it and slash away. At two chapters in, the plot is fairly bare-bones, with a standard setup for this type of game, but that’s totally fine since, like many games from the era it’s aping, it’s little more than an excuse to hang the gameplay on. You control a ninja whose design looks like it leapt off the page of an 80s comic book in a dystopian future where AI robots have all but decimated humanity. But whereas SK was a sort of mishmash between Duck Tales and Super Mario Bros 3, with some Zelda 2 thrown in for good measure, Cyber Shadow feels more like Ninja Gaiden by way of the original Castlevania, but with a much more accessible difficulty than either of those infamous titles. The graphics look like they’d fit right at home on the original NES, the soundtrack is pretty damn good, and the challenge level is high. In many ways, Cyber Shadow feels similar to Shovel Knight.
The cheeky references to classic NES titles are there but are thankfully subtle. And if my first hour and a half of the game is anything to go by, it would appear the once-small indie studio is looking to corner the market on challenging throwback platformers. Point being, Yacht Club Games is no stranger to making excellent platformers that feel old school with modern ideas.Ĭyber Shadow is the first game they’ve published but didn’t develop, with Mechanical Head Studios taking the reins instead. It also felt like revisionist history gone were outdated ideas like a lives system, and you could upgrade your character with permanent buffs like extra strength and health. In many ways, that game felt just like the platformers of old, complete with big, chunky pixels, a kicking soundtrack, colorful graphics, and almost immediately iconic characters. Part of its surge in popularity can be traced back to Yacht Club Game’s smash hit Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove. Throwback games of all genres are all the rage on the indie scene these days, and Cyber Shadow fits right in.
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