White Shadows

Its puzzles are simple, but White Shadows offers two hours of creative, chilling designs, joyous musical set pieces and enough screen-shottable sights to fill your hard drive.

The amount of criticism dished out here may paint a negative picture, but White Shadows is by no means a terrible product and so evidently houses a clear visual style and competent-enough execution of puzzle-platforming.

White Shadows tackles heavy themes with some wonderful storytelling. The gameplay itself is competent, and there is enough variety level to level to make the experience fresh throughout. Through stark visuals and a well placed soundtrack it presents its tale artfully, but unfortunately runs its course in only a few hours. It's hard to squeeze a great deal of game from the experience, but what is there is splendid.

There's no denying that White Shadows' atmosphere and visuals are the stars of the show so I sincerely want to see the developers make a second game that hopefully offers a lot more substantial gameplay and perhaps a narrative that's open to some interpretation.

Black and white Dystopia animal farm with nice look and good but short gameplay.

It's also ambiguous, at least until the latter moments when the world's history is laid bare in a somewhat out of place but impressive nonetheless storybook sequence.

I feel like it’s especially hard to put into words how well-constructed this game was graphic-wise.

White Shadows is a great debut title from Monokel that has great visuals, touches on some dark subject matter, and performs solidly in the gameplay department. It needs a patch or two to tighten up the framerate and Ravengirl’s journey will be over before you know it. The world and environmental storytelling really stuck with me though and it’s one of my favorite indie games of this year.

White Shadows is a dark and oppressive experience, but don’t write it off. It’s reminiscent of Limbo and the like, but homages can be a good thing at times. It is criminally short, however, and would have really benefited from a bit more challenge and/or length in its puzzles. If you enjoy your misery in small bursts, this will be for you.

The platforming is mediocre, the performance is terrible, but there is heart here. I look forward to what Monokel has in store for us with their next title as there is clear talent on this team, and they are not afraid to tackle some very delicate topics.