Shardlight
| Shardlight | |
|---|---|
| Studio | Wadjet Eye Games |
| Publisher | Wadjet Eye Games |
| Senior Developer |
Ben Chandler Francisco Gonzalez |
| composer | Nathaniel Chambers |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
March 8, 2016 |
| platform | iOS , Microsoft Windows |
| Game engine | Adventure Game Studio |
| genre | Adventure |
| Subject | Post apocalypse |
| Game mode | Single player |
| control | Mouse & keyboard |
| medium | Download |
| language | English |
Shardlight is a point-and-click adventure from development studio Wadjet Eye Games from 2016.
action
Amy Wellard has a disease called "green lung" and is on a lottery job where she fixes a reactor to get a lottery ticket. In the underground reactor base, she meets a man who has been crushed under rubble falling from the ceiling. Amy releases him from his misery, but first the man hands her a letter addressed to someone named Danton. She returns to the Department of Energy, where she receives her lottery ticket from the head of the aristocracy, Tiberius. When she tells him about the dying man's letter, he orders her to deliver it. Amy finds the secret hiding place of Danton and her rebellious movement and hands over the letter. When she tells Tiberius about it, he asks her to act as a spy and find out what the rebels are planning. Since Amy is interested in the vaccine for her disease, she agrees. The rebels see through her, however, and now want to use Amy as a double agent. Danton reveals to Amy that the letter contains important information from the Ministry of Medicine and wants Amy to infiltrate the Ministry. Amy is supposed to go to Fripp-Platz and visit Silas Harrison, a nobleman who has shown signs of green lung and is to be seen by a doctor.
Amy manages to find Harrison's property and breaks in. She steals an appointment card that was meant for Harrison, with which she can enter the Ministry. Amy visits the doctor in disguise and is given a dose of the vaccine. She subsequently breaks into the storeroom and finds it full of vaccines, enough to treat the entire population for years. Amy realizes that the government has lied all along. However, she is arrested and sent to prison, where she is supposed to remain until she is executed. Tiberius visits her and reveals that he has put a bug on her and that she has failed the loyalty test. He also wants to take out Danton and the rest of the rebels. Amy manages to escape with the help of a red-eyed raven. When she arrives at the rebel hideout, everyone is dead. She finds a hidden message and learns that Danton survived and fled to the reactor base. Before Amy goes there, she gives her lottery ticket to a friend as she already has a dose of the vaccine herself and therefore no longer needs the ticket. Through a public announcement, she learns that her lot has been won and Amy believes it was a coincidence. When she comes to Danton, however, she is told that the lottery is just a farce and that the government can track people with any number and therefore use their friend as bait to get at Amy.
Amy goes to Willowdale Plaza and finds her friend who is being tortured by two guards. Amy cannot save her friend and tries to escape. She is attacked by a guard, but manages to kill him, but is mortally wounded and almost bleeds to death. She sees the Grim Reaper in a vision and then passes out. When she wakes up, she is at a friend's house and learns that she has been in a coma for three weeks. She visits Danton again and learns that she is planning to attack Tiberius, but she lacks the people. Amy joins the Grim Reaper's acolytes, a sect that is waiting for the Grim Reaper to take her away. She drinks a special potion that gives her the so-called vision and lets her talk to the Grim Reaper. While in a hallucinatory state, she sees some dead people and speaks to them. When she wakes up from it, she continues her search for the Grim Reaper. Amy comes across an old train where she meets a woman who tells her about the subway. When she gets there, Amy finds the secret hiding place of the Grim Reaper, who turns out to be a doctor in disguise. The Grim Reaper is a person he invented to scare off others and quietly work on a permanent cure for the green lung. The cure is almost ready to use, all he needs is a human subject to test it and the information necessary to mass-produce the drug. Amy also learns that the red-eyed ravens are actually mechanical and that the doctor used them to help her several times. Amy now has to get the information for the mass production of the cure from the Department of Energy.
Before that, she breaks into the quarantine zone to look for a test person. She escapes with an old friend and takes him to the doctor. Amy then calls in the Grim Reaper's followers, who help her and the rebels distract Tiberius' guards after she and the doctor have convinced her that the Grim Reaper is not real. Amy also returns to the old train and learns from the lady that there is an underground entrance to the Department of Energy. Amy and Danton break into the Ministry and work their way up to the top of the tower. After one final confrontation with Tiberius, Amy has the option to shoot him, Danton, or both.
Game principle and technology
Shardlight is a graphic adventure game in which the player controls a character to explore the environment, interact with people and objects, and solve puzzles. In dialogue with another character, a portrait of him appears in the corner of the screen and the player can often decide what the protagonist will say. The reactions and actions of the other characters can change depending on what the player chooses, and towards the end of the game the dialogue options determine which of the three alternate endings the game takes.
History of origin
Author Francisco Gonzales was previously responsible for the Ben Jordan adventure series . A central motive of Gonzales' in the technical design of Shardlight was the simplification of the interface compared to his previous games.
reception
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Shardlight received mostly positive reviews. The Metacritic review database aggregates 26 reviews to a mean of 75. Adventure Gamers magazine saw a stylish and unique retro approach to the apocalypse, full of interesting characters and small design nuances. The magazine criticized the fact that the story flattens out halfway through the game and looks a bit snappy at the end.
Web links
- Official website. Retrieved January 8, 2020 .
- Shardlight at MobyGames (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ TechRaptor.net: A Conversation with Francisco Gonzalez about Shardlight. Retrieved May 23, 2020 .
- ^ A b Peter Mattsson: Shardlight. In: Adventure Gamers. March 8, 2016, accessed January 15, 2020 .
- ↑ Adventure-Treff.de: Shardlight: Test. Retrieved May 23, 2020 .
- ↑ Gamespot.com: Shardlight Review. Retrieved January 15, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Metacritic.com: Shardlight. Retrieved January 15, 2020 .