Shadow Puppets

Shadow Point Year: 2019 Rating: E Time Played: ~7.5 hours One of the most underappreciated kinds of virtual reality games are the ones that both tell a great story and have interesting gameplay mechanics. In Shadow Point, the story follows a lost girl who finds herself trapped in a parallel universe and enjoying the freedom this bizarre world gives her. Its gameplay centers on a form of “shadow puppets” that the player creates using light and a variety of found objects. There is enough content in both portions of this game to be entertaining right up to the end of the emotionally gripping climax. With narration provided by Patrick Stewart, Shadow Point jumps along the young girl’s timeline with each subsequent world explored via the observatory “hub world.” As she grows up fending for herself, the initial excitement involved with exploring this new world gradually fades. Her voice actor expertly captures this change as the game progresses, eventually leading to one of the most emotional moments I’ve...

Shadow PuppetsYear: 2002Author: Orson Scott CardLength: 646 minutes / 10.77 hours It’s odd for me to read the third book in a series and be confronted with problems that I usually see by the fourth book. So far, I’ve been on board with the whole Shadow series as it focuses on an interesting character in the form of Bean. For two books, I’ve read about Bean’s survival, made all the more thrilling by the antagonist Achilles. Of course, during Ender’s Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon, the series picked up plenty of side stories and sub-plots. This is what ruined Shadow Puppets for me: the focus wasn’t on Bean and Achilles, but rather on advancing the story of all these sub-plots. Now, don’t get me wrong, Shadow Puppets has a lot of interesting events. It’s just that it was so entertaining to read about Achilles in the previous books, and he’s relegated to a bookending motif for this book. We don’t get...

Tag: Shadow Puppets

VIDEO GAME: Shadow Point (2019)

BOOK: Shadow Puppets (2002)