Website: http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/games/shardlight/

Price: $5.99 GOG

Blurb: “The world ended on the day the bombs fell. Since then, it’s always been like this: disease, hunger, death. The ruling Aristocrats — a faceless oligarchy that controls all resources — have unchallenged authority. There’s never enough food, water, or vaccines to go around. The rich receive regular doses of vaccinations in exchange for their unconditional government support. The poor live in fear, superstition, and squalor until they die. 

Amy Wellard, a young woman, reluctantly working for the government to qualify for the vaccine lottery, believes there’s a cure — and she’s going to find it. Even if it costs her her life.“

So, somehow I mixed up “Old Skies” and “Shardlight”, I suppose because the art and color palette are the same. Sharlight is from 2016 and Old Skies is 2025 and they look the same. What can I say? Other than you are treated to my play-through of Shardlight instead of Old Skies.

Installation

Yep, you guessed it, GOG installer :) The game installed quickly and I could see that the audio was the largest part of the game. Though the game is older, it installed on Ubuntu Gnome 24.04.

Gameplay

I did have issues starting the game, where it complained that adventure game studio 64 (I think!) was not responding. After a few attempts at killing the game, I went ahead and clicked “wait” a few times, and, lo and behold, the game started. We are presented with a menu screen.

The first thing you notice is that there is no mouse acceleration. I headed into the options, but there are only options related to sound. 

There is also a “commentary” check box that overlays four keys that you can use to hear commentary from different departments.

I’m not going to lie, I have this on-and-off, love-hate relationship with Wadjeteye games. There are always Linux versions, so I cannot be too strict, but lacking mouse acceleration settings is a large oversight. Tap-drag, tap-drag, tap-drag on my touchpad to move 30% across the screen is not on.

In this story, we have a post-apocalyptic ruined city with people getting something called the green lung. A nod to black lung, I think, which was Tuberculosis, if I remember correctly, but I suppose black lung was taken and more black on an already grim storyline, may have been over the top. Yep, you heard me, “grim”. If you are into noire stories and dark plot twists, this game may scratch an itch.


Trigger: People will ask you to kill them, in like the first few minutes of the game. So if you don’t like that sort of thing, stop reading now.


There are no cute bunnies and happy endings here, be prepared for the worst. You (Amy) start off with the green lung disease. I’m not sure if the sluggish mouse is supposed to convey this? Also the so-called lottery, is for a temporary vaccine that cures your green lung, only for a while. You can get to enter said lottery, by doing jobs no-one else is willing to do. 

The keepers of the vaccines are the not-very imaginatively named “Aristocrats”. You (Amy) are on a mission to repair a reactor (Think Star Trek, Mr Spock’s death) for these Aristocrats with “powdered face” masks that remind one of the Guy Fawkes masks you see in toy stores, but more “French”. The Aristos are the bad guys. The story is very straightforward once you complete the game. I can say I was expecting “Usual suspects”-twists, but there never were any. I won’t spoil the story for anyone who wants to get their $5 worth, but know there are other “factions” too.

Graphics

When it comes to background painting in pixel art, Wadjeteye are masters at their craft. While this game is 10 years old (almost) - I am not sure when the Special Edition was released – it still holds up. You get that Kings Quest feel, but with better graphics and more colors. It’s not Old Skies, I’ll see if I can lay my hands on a copy in the next month or so, unless someone wants to make a donation, misc@fullcirclemagazine.org, however, I feel that Old Skies may be in the same vein as this in the graphics department, as Wadjeteye is an Indie studio. As beautiful as the settings are, I feel that the characters could have gotten a bit more love, in some places. The lightning, on the other hand, was really nice for a pixel art game, helping with the immersion.

Music

While the music works in-game, enhancing the experience, the OST you receive in the special edition should never be on anyone’s playlist, ever!!! It cannot stand alone. (I’d rather add the Caves of Qud music to my playlist.) The music is tailored to certain scenes and somehow they fit in, but take it out of context and you end up with music that accompanies diarrhea. It is ambient sounds that somehow got labelled “music” and should not be in a soundtrack folder. To give you some idea, I haven’t frowned this much in a very long time, listening to game music. 

Sound

Yes, I split off sound as I need to highlight the voice actors in this game. It is really well done and rounds off the already rounded characters. In fact, while your Special Edition package is about 1.4GB, the game shell script is only about 600MB and of that, about 70% is sound. This may be because of the commentary, which for me, was the only cool part of the “special edition”. 

Thoughts

I always give Steam reviews a look to see what people complain about, you know, valid things or nonsense reasons, but this time I gave Metacritic the benefit of the doubt. “Generally Favorable Based on 26 Critic Reviews 75.” I’m sorry, I don’t see that and I’ll tell you why: The story starts out great with tension and suspense, but loses it towards the end. The backdrops and world building and the storyline are just not in the same tier. A solid 60% sure, but 75%, not really. The puzzles were not difficult and everything felt like it was ambling along, there were no hooks or twists and turns. The trackpad control was terrible.

Takeaway

The special edition is not worth it. The OST is a cacophony of sound and the voice-over videos are mildly entertaining, once. The wallpapers leave much to be desired – no, scrap that, they are crap, there, I said it - and the character concepts I would not use for an avatar. That leaves the five propaganda posters that are sort of interesting in a Fallout way, but nothing to write home about. My advice is: Buy the base game, then use your savings to get some chocolate to munch on while playing the game, you will thank me later!

To answer @Bigfoot: - I have had to shift towards GOG for games as Steam blatantly said you do not own the games you paid for, so I cannot in good conscience spend any more money there. GOG gives me a shell file that I can keep and install on as many PCs as I want and it’s always want DRM free.