Shadow of the Depth Review | PC

In the past few years, the roguelike genre has been in a place where most are pretty much happy to have another one coming out. Deck builders, literal poker roguelikes, souls-like roguelikes, and many more subgenres are in the circulation of the gaming market and seems like there is no stopping whatsoever. Unlike the battle royale fad, which turned into dust after a few years of relevancy, it seems like people like the idea of building their character and restarting fresh once they ultimately fail to reach their goal.

I can’t blame them, as it is rather fun to choose your way of fighting against your enemies. Every run to the end is different and variations that are given to you are always randomized, therefore spicing up your plans either in a good or a bad way. The rising popularity of roguelikes is a great addition to the sea of games that are out there, do not get me wrong, but sudden emergence and copy-cats arriving one by one are giving us, the players, a hard time choosing a stable game to play.

Just like any other roguelike out there, Shadow of Depth also provides the same quality you could expect from a game that keeps advertising its roguelike aspects with procedural dungeon building and randomized items to choose from. Not to mention, it also provides five different characters with varying stats to pick at the beginning, which is another way of telling that the game lacks originality- but not in a way that is presented to the player.

 

Story-wise, Shadow of the Depth is rather saddening to hear about. Arthur, a blacksmith’s son, finds his dad being killed in the armor he and his dad forged, as his town is getting bombarded with creatures and their malicious intent. To take his father’s revenge, Arthur grabs the armor and starts fighting off demons, getting to the bottom of the problem- and ceasing it once it for all.

Unlike most of the roguelikes out there, which either include an isometric or 3D environment, Shadow of the Depth provides a complete top-down experience, meaning that you do not see your character in their full stance. Not to say those are some crude drawings, but the perspective taken is rather unique on it is own. We barely see any true top-down games, let alone one being set for the roguelike genre. In the first few minutes of the gameplay, you are given a tutorial on how the Shadow of the Depth plays, which showcases the basic control scheme of your choosing. There are gamepad, keyboard, and keyboard and mouse options, which can be found in any other roguelike game.

The controls are okay, depending on your preference, it is going to play out fine. But if you want to feel the most comfortable way, choosing the keyboard and mouse scheme is the best, as auto aim in these games can be iffy at its best. The existence of the mouse aim allows you to focus your fire on one target while auto aim just aims at the closest target, which can be dangerous if you are not paying attention. Again, this is just a little suggestion if you are a newcomer to the genre or if you happen to be a veteran or want to take some challenge for yourself, you could try gamepad or keyboard-only modes.

 

Back to the tutorial business, what I liked about the tutorial is that whatever you see or do is completely available in the game. There aren’t any hidden techniques or high-skill ceilings that you must master to get better. Sure, the characters have their traits, which I will talk about soon, but it is very easy to get used to the gameplay of Shadow of the Depth once you get a grasp. It could be easily one of the reasons why you should pick up this roguelike rather than thousands that exist out there.

The gameplay starts off slow, with your character being barebones and barely putting out any damage. As you fight through the hordes of enemies, you start picking up items from chests, let it be weapons, potions, or upgrade books, it is completely randomized. Sometimes you get trapped in a certain place in the map that you must fight your way out until every enemy is defeated, and you get a special chest to open. These usually include a higher-grade item or books to change your playstyle. It is a nice way to reward players who overcame the task of managing to survive in a very dense area, but sometimes the reward can be underwhelming depending on your current build.

Since your rewards are completely random, getting a weapon has some variation of it being either better than what the character uses or has down-right terrible stats. Not to fret, if the newly found weapon is of no use to you, it can be sold for coins. But I like the idea of selling unwanted arsenal, it's just not the “Either you pick it up or it's vanished together.” sort of situation. You can keep the weapon, or try it out and then change back to what you were using, it certainly opens up for experimental sides of building your character, which is often perceived as an upside as some other roguelikes are also very keen on not giving any freedom to players.

 

As stated earlier, Shadow of the Depth includes five different characters with their playstyles. They range from swordsmen to archers, so your options usually change from close-range combat to long-range combat, but still, their output of damage, health pool, dodge speeds, and other mechanics differ from each other. Before trying every character, Shadow of the Depth wants you to get acquainted with the main character first, so everyone besides Arthur will be locked until you reach a certain level. If you manage to do well in the first run, you might just unlock every character right away.

To combat being a hard game, Shadow of the Depth also rewards you for finishing a game on a higher note. Characters aside, you can earn Runes to aid your character before starting the game. These usually make life easier for you, so that you can reach the end goal faster and more efficiently. The skill ramps up evenly too, Shadow of the Depth can easily understand what your build is and starts putting enemies in a dense order making it difficult to pass through. On top of that, there are also hazards in the levels you have to watch out for.

The combat plays, well, I could say it is okay. It's not top-of-the-line stuff, but it is somewhat satisfying to see numbers go up when you slice an enemy and hear the hit sounds. Besides the audio cues and numbers, the combat is not so flashy as you are always watching everything from the top. Still, it could have been worse, the game does a good job of letting you identify which enemy does what, and you can move or dodge according to their patterns.

 

Just like any other roguelike game fashion, you have to get through a boss between levels to proceed with your adventure. Depending on your build, the bosses are either too easy or dominating. In my first playthrough of Shadow of the Depth, I upgraded one of my main attacks to deal with stun more frequently. And this didn’t go well for the boss, as it was taking extra damage, on top of being stunned quite often. Maybe a cooldown on a tougher enemy, like a mini-boss or boss itself, then it could potentially fix the issue.

The culprit for the broken attack patterns comes from pickups you find across your journey. These range from altering the basic attack pattern or adding new mechanics to your builds. On top of that, Skill and Upgrade Books boost your damage output significantly, making later levels a breeze to push through. The only interchangeable skills you get are from the weapons you wield, which is always about putting out damage. For example, while one sword and shield option does earthquake-like damage, the other one does spin attack instead.

By gathering upgrades, you essentially make your options a tough nut to be cracked. Essentially, you need to opt for the best available items you are given by considering the future and using your coins properly. Besides little management and top-down style, Shadow of the Depth, unfortunately, does not give a unique way of playing roguelikes. The generated dungeons along with the same enemy types boil it down to a rather forgettable title. Not to say the game is bad, again, it is fun but when it comes to presenting never-heard-of mechanics, there is nothing to take Shadow of the Depth into account for.

 

While this is an early version of the game, some of the nitpicks I had were the randomly generated rooms that have one single corridor that leads to a very small reward. Since levels are filled with hazardous environments, such as spiked floors, the game wanted to create a single corridor with hazards and wanted me to inch through them slowly.

If the incident only happened once, I’d not mind it but that type of generated room always came across on my playthroughs so I do not know if the engine is having issues with that little segments. Some of the rooms tended to be rather empty too, which was okay but once the game engine started placing enemies in very cramped areas, it became a chore to plow through enemies rather than being an enjoyable experience.

Visually speaking, Shadow of the Depth can be pretty with the simple yet brutal art style, what made me rather happy was the heavy usage of ambient sounds during the engine crawling and fighting with demons. Background music, which sounded like a heavy movie score with opera and big band tunes, only would appear in arenas and boss fights. However, as I said, the ambient sounds of the dungeons were top-notch, it would have been nice if we were to keep during heavy fights as well.

 

Overall, Shadow of the Depth provides nothing new in terms of a roguelike game, yet it is intriguing enough to keep players trying to finish every story of the available characters. The combat is fluid but nothing too fancy, and it is quite short too considering there aren’t many levels to reach a character’s endstory. I’d say give it a shot nevertheless as every roguelike fan wouldn’t mind having an extra choice in their library to fill their daily dose of roguelike titles. 

Atilla Turan (@burningarrow)
Editor, NoobFeed