Shadows of the Afterland

My first impression of Shadows of the Afterland is a good one: The old school pixelart is crisp, colourful and superbly animated, the voice cast is great, and the game offers an interesting and unique twist on the afterlife setting that draws you in immediately. The LucasArts influence is clearly there, but wisely chooses not to overindulge in pointless nostalgia bait, instead focusing on doing its own thing. However, despite Shadows of the Afterland clearly being a well-made and enjoyable adventure game, there's also just... something lacking. The premise of navigating a bureaucratic afterlife in search of answers is intriguing and the comedy aspects are fine, but the deeper we get into the game, the more the story seems to pivot towards real drama and emotional stakes that the writing itself isn't good enough to carry. There's obviously nothing inherently wrong with mixing serious drama and light-hearted comedy, but the clash between the colorful fantasy slapstick and the grim references to the real life hardships under Francos fascist dictatorship, including torture and executions creates a bit of mood whiplash that quite frankly doesn't really benefit either part of the mix. …

Great game. It has soul to it. I do wish It was a bit longer though. And that last pesky achievement-

The game starts out nice enough, and the plot is actually pretty interesting. However, the writing gets worse as the story progresses. The part where [spoiler]Pilar has to overcome her fear[/spoiler] was particularly annoying to me. There's also the overused trope of [spoiler]officials swooping in after the bad guy already escaped, only to arrest the protagonist for stupid reasons[/spoiler]. Rating: ★★★☆☆

Good pixel art, good story. Puzzles were good, not too obtuse like some point and click adventures. I do wish it was a little longer, but for the price I can't complain.

I liked it

There's two titles that kept springing to my mind, well, one title and one series. We'll start with the theming and humour - this kept bringing to mind Grim Fandango, I know it's not, graphically it's FAR interior and this game came out 2026, Grim Fandango was what... 95? Anyway we can just pretend it's a stylistic choice, the other is the Wadjet Eye Games Blackwell Series for some of the game mechanics I think both of these comparisons do this game a credit. I also wanted to take just a second to point out how good the VA Work is. Honestly, i've played some games with terrible voiceovers where conversations have been had when you could tell neither voice actor was in the room with the other to get a sense of tone/pitch in response - this doesn't happen here. It feels very much like everyone was in the room doing readings and knew their assignments. This is truly a love letter to the Point & Click Adventure Titles. It's worth your time to play and enjoy.