Tread into Shadowgate, the Living Castle - Let's Play the Shadowgate Remake!

Welcome to Shadowgate, one of the finest fantasy-themed point and click adventure games I've played. Shadowgate 2014 is a remake of a much older version from the Apple computer days. The NES port was pretty popular, and is part of a series of adventure games by ICOM Simulations known as the "MacVenture" series.

The game revels in a certain fantasy aesthetic where the world is constructed more as a hodgepodge of fantasy tropes and setpieces just thrown together into one location. Most of these setpieces are traps or creatures that want to kill you, and exploring Shadowgate Castle has the vibe of setting off a wizard's home security system. Like most adventure games, the narration will be playful about the situations and foolishness you get yourself into.

How much of a remake is it? The graphics and music are absolutely phenomenal for this type of game, it has a modern UI, and the gameplay has been redesigned. This last point is important because it offers very much a "fresh game" to solve even though the overall flow matches the original. So items, rooms, and the general castle layout mostly return, but with enough differences, new additions, and new solutions so that the old elements often serve more as "references" and less as "repeats". While the puzzles are generally different, beating the original would give you significant carryover knowledge into the remake. Think more along the lines of "Resident Evil Remake", rather than a faithful remake that just modernizes the audio and visuals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIW_OeR3Pq0


I'll be trying to upload this series briskly -- every other day -- if free time permits. This is faster than most forum LPs, but spreading out the effort just doesn't work for me. You can watch at your own pace of course, I'll still be reading the comments. Plus, this way if you really enjoy the LP you should be able to watch a 15 minute chunk per day without outpacing the uploads.

Hey, the MacVenture series! Good stuff there. I'm not sure if I would call the NES port of Shadowgate one of my absolute favorite games but it is one I liked a lot. So I am interested in seeing the remake / update of the game.

The MacVenture series does seem to be pretty popular around here.

Octo has done LPs of most of the game in that series:
Shadowgate
Deja Vu [sic]
The Uninvited
(Unfortunately, the images in the last two are being held hostage by photobucket*.)

*Fuck those guys.

And MetManMas and I have talked about the covers for some of the games in the miscellaneous cover art thread that I created:
Shadowgate
Deja Vu [still sic]
The Uninvited

I'm here for this.

How does torch timing work? Is it real-time? Is it action-based, and if so, do all your "Look" actions advance the timer?

Despite the unforgiving reputation of the original game, the remake is pretty lenient with deaths. I understand the impetus behind adding new death messages, but to me, it'll always be a sad thing that your adventure has ended here.

Torches tick downward with each turn/action (including moving to the next room), but "look" doesn't count.

If you want the game to murder you dead, that's what the harder difficulty settings are for.

Anyway, here's my old description of them (again).

Oh, for sure the game seems murdering you at every opportunity and with alarmingly little provocation. I only mean that the penalty is you've wasted twenty seconds. That's refreshing coming from the Sierra school of "hope you saved after every action in a different save slot each time."

But now you've got me excited for what's coming.

I should clarify that there is no cat like this in the actual game. It's just a non-spoilery way of talking about how the puzzle complexity and likelihood of you dying increases with each difficulty level.

No, that was clear.

Obviously, it's a dragon.

Episode 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odI8-kVJkQs


Expect musings on which items are pointless, finding a very trusty shield, stealing treasure from dragons and tombs, meeting two kinds of spectral creatures, and getting an amazingly sincere description of a broom.

It's interesting to see the iconic locations from the original. I'm not super familiar with the original, but I didn't recognize much the original in the first video, whereas this one has the lake, the lava bridges, and the mirrors (with extra mirrors!).

Of course, the solutions have probably all changed...

Yeah, Shadowgate certainly does have memorable parts even if you've only played or seen it played once. I have to imagine the Dragon's Den sticks in everyone's mind, since it pairs an interesting fantasy element with a very "video game" room concept.

I think you can be looser with spoilers if you'd prefer, it's all coming out anyway.

The Shadowgate reboot definitely has its share of "similar but different" areas, but the big thing is that the solutions are usually different. The classic puzzles are mostly front-loaded and even at the start there's a bunch of new content mixed in with the old. It really is a remake and not just the classic MacVenture with different graphics.

Sure would be nice if the Déj� Vu duology and Uninvited ever got remakes like this, but I know they were never as big as Shadowgate was. Maybe it's 'cuz they were (comparatively) less kill-happy. Or maybe 'cuz they didn't have Death himself showing up every time you died. Or maybe 'cuz they weren't a Japanese meme thanks to Shadowgate's goofy first person narrated localization over there.

Episode 3:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D-f2a77ipQ
[Edit: I'm going to snip out some of the older embeds to speed up the page load]

Expect musings on torch music being unwanted, the downside of not finding every intended clue, acquiring new verbs, offering a small hint for the NES version, and wondering what makes a statue 'dwarven'.

I was going to suggest lighting the other torches in the wraith room... but then I watched for a few more seconds.

Same, and when dosboot actually solved the puzzle it was so familiar that I'm 90% certain I've done it before (or probably watched brickroad do it).

Episode 4:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO3kEFTQlQ4

Expect overflowing enjoyment of this game's quiet music track, eye-catching sparklies, remarking that Jair would look like a fool in real life, and guessing what might and might not be different on master difficulty.

Episode 5:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGWGxnU2r-Y

Expect observations on how Jair would be fascinated by snowglobes, finding extra resilient bandanas, keeping a cool head about the prospect of restarting the game, generating creative solutions using ice and water, and becoming familiar with late stage banshee symptoms.

It's a happy thing that your adventures have restarted here?

Jair the fearless adventurer died doing what he loved: convulsing on the ground in some dingy basement.

Episode 6:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeZ_iNoJrh0

Expect musings on my favorite music track from this game, having a laborious pumpkin conclusion, observing the distinct fashion we open scrolls, and the simple joy of snowy ambience.

Episode 7:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LabF-MFI2kQ

Expect musings on how important our shield is to our mental state, trying to remember difficulty differences, listening intently at background instruments, and offering a methodical technique to save turns.

Your splash image is gone for this episode. Was that intentional?

And will our hero ever escape the banshee's curse??

I'm just switching up the thumbnail template for a bit.

Theoretically, we could cure the banshee's curse pretty soon but to Jair's displeasure we miss one of the required steps and end up doing a lot of the other key objectives first.

Episode 8:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsnlt-lsHuQ

Expect goblin fisticuffs, foraging foodstuffs from the bottom of well, and coming to terms that everything in Shadowgate is dirty and/or stinky.

The next episode (planned for Nov 1st) is going to purely reading through the books on the library shelf, plus picking up/examining the 3 or so books we left on the desks. Some of the books on the shelf give puzzle clues and plot-specific lore, although it isn't very much and I'll reference those clues as they seem relevant to future puzzles.

The other books -- the vast majority -- contain odd-ball in-universe fiction, irrelevant lore (e.g., distant lands or events never connected to the game), plus a few jokes and references to other media.

I am keen to include this episode in its entirety for those who will find it enjoyable, but you aren't missing much if you want to jump from episode 8 to episode 10.

I can't say it sounds thrilling, but I also can't say I won't watch it

Episode 9:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR0gceeepz4

Our dedicated book reading episode.

Episode 10:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iX17MZL6b4

Expect appreciation of more delightful music tracks, Jair to disregard the Marquess of Queensberry Rules, finding a loop-around shortcut, and evidence of a spider who doesn't give a crap.

That punching the goblins works when you're too slow to use the dirk is pretty baffling.

Episode 11:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfXoyd-dANM

Expect musings on having every kind of long metal stick, getting real tired of our one useless key, and wondering "how could there be distinct-looking darkness that is distinguishable from any other darkness?"

I think the idea is that you need time and space to pull your dirk out and point it forward, whereas your hands are always ready.