The perserverancia is the secret to progress in the games of infiltration, and it seems that also to create them. Born from a student project materialized later in the indie amateur title ” Path of Shadows”” Three years ago, Aragami (originally known as Twin Souls)during his kickstarter patronage campaign) has probably been one of the most followed projects by fans of this somewhat abandoned genre.
A game that with a growing ambition has been polished until reaching the current release. It does not hide the LinceWorks team which has been its references: Tenchu , Mark of the Ninja or Dishonored . And yet your product feels fresh compared to these titles, partly because of its graphic style and partly because of its playability, which takes ideas seen in these titles but distils them to your liking.
The power of shadows
Here the key is no longer stealth but specifically staying in the dark . The light not only makes us visible from a distance, but it also empties us of the power of the shadows. And this element is the basis of playable mechanics. Our character,
Aragami as the title of the game, is capable both of teleporting into the shadows at short distances, and of creating shadow spaces in the middle of the moonlight when we need one and there is no fence. Of course, for this we need to have power of the shadow, which recovers almost instantaneously in the dark, stays under the light of the moon and empties almost immediately in the light.
Thanks to these powers, if we are skilled and fast enough, we can teleport from our hiding place to the same face of our enemy, kill him and hide again. But since not everything was going to be so easy, our enemies, the warriors of light, do not go around with little ones.
These enemies are repetitive and just throw us their wave of deadly light if they see us, so we must understand that the visual contact with them means an almost instantaneous death unless we are close enough to kill them before they strike us with the
waves of light that throw us. The truth is that a little more variety would be appreciated in this section but it fulfills its function correctly.
In addition, although their vision in the dark leaves much to be desired, finding a corpse or intuiting our silhouette will make them immediately react , leave their guard routes and start an intense search, with an artificial intelligence quite
well resolved. Due to this, and the absence of a map or way of knowing in advance their positions or routes , it will be common for us to have to replay the same area several times until we find the key to the best route for our interests.
Actually there are two quite different ways to face the game: kill all (or a large part of the enemies) and then move forward without threats to the eye, or jump from shadow to shadow trying not to be detected. While normally and depending on our interests
we will mix one or the other to a greater or lesser extent, the game will reward us at the end of each level if we have remained completely faithful to
one of the two ways. This system of instantaneous jumps between shades takes advantage in some moments also to provide small sections of plataformeo, or zones that fall if we are not fast enough, and that they give some variety to the design of levels.
Good level design
But beyond the anecdote, in general the structure of the scenarios follows the model of large areas with obstacles where to hide and finish with our enemies united by spaces where history is told and these sections of the platform. In general, the care
taken in designing each of these large spaces is noted so that there are many routes and optionswithout making things easy for us either. The route to follow will be marked by a peephole that we can invoke at any time, a function that will avoid getting lost
especially in cases where the path to follow is not the most natural. It is striking that beyond this window when we invoke it and the cursor that
allows us to indicate where to teleport, the screen remains completely clean of user interface elements .
Instead we have the layer of our character, whose color will change from black to red depending on whether we are in shadows or light, and his motif will be erased or filled according to our remaining shadow power.
Cooperative multiplayer
As a surprise in a genre that is accustomed to loneliness, this Aragami allows us to play cooperatively with another player through the internet, either with friends or with other connected users, providing a way to make the areas that get stuck easier
and easier. try to play differently the already known areas. The graphics are an evolution of those that showed that Path of Shadows ,
with a well-done cell shading style and a high contrast between the areas of shadow and light that puts them at the service of the gameplay and improves the visual aspect that would otherwise be too dominated by darkness.
