The first project for any independent development team is a very important project, as it gives an overview of the general direction of the team and what it can look forward to from its future projects. White Shadows is the first project for the German development team Monokel, which currently consists of only 7 people. The game is a platform experience that comes to us in black and white. With a very similar approach to the adorable Limbo and Inside by Playdead and trying to bring the team a game that can be directly looked at and compared to those two games automatically is an interesting decision, how was White Shadows?
The game puts you in the role of the girl Ravengirl who roams a huge industrial city depicting a capitalist dystopia with high-rise structures and gloomy industrial character and the use of exclusively black and white colors enhances that gloomy feeling and gives additional depth to this environment, the story of the game revolves around racism, oppression and class which you will notice in many ads Scattered around the city, but the game does not leave you the task of getting to know the main idea behind its story, but rather tells you about it through a warning message that appears as soon as you play the game. Controlling the course of things as the evil group and portraying other groups of society as other animals all have clear connotations.
The story suffers from many unsuccessful decisions. In a later part of the experience, you will be informed of all the events that led to what you are currently watching, but this does not happen at the end of the story, but rather occurs in a relatively early period that breaks the mystery centered around the surrounding environment, and the game depicts forms of racism Persecution and controlling public opinion, but it portrays these matters without addressing these problems, and these problems could have been presented in a more symbolic way that pushes you to think and conclude that the game talks about racism rather than portraying it explicitly that misses the exciting storyline.
On the graphic level, the game offers a beautiful artistic direction that corresponds to the use of black and white colors, and the depiction of the environment is accurate and full of details. Classic melodies that beautifully capture some scenes.
The gameplay is simple, the character is able to jump and interact with some elements of the environment with the press of a button. The problem of the control system is the slow movement of the character and his slow response to jump, which makes the jumping parts between platforms annoying, especially those that depend on the speed of response. The slow pace of movement makes the timing of your jumps difficult The character is also unable to change the course of its movement while jumping, which is an annoying decision that will make some other parts of the game confusing as well. The game offers some very simple puzzles that do not present any challenge to finish them, and we do not know if they can be called puzzles, and we may prefer to use the term “obstacles” Most of them try to slow down your progress no more and can be bypassed by pressing a button or returning to a previous place to fetch a specific tool.
The game is very short and we finished it in only two hours and the content is limited to the story that the game presents. White Shadows is a bold attempt by the development team Monokel to pose some social problems in a bold way, and while the game tried to be similar to some masterpieces, but it failed in that, the storyline was not homogeneous The gameplay was inaccurate and disturbing, although the depiction of the dystopian city was outstanding and the music was carefully selected, which is an uneven experience, but it shows some of the capabilities of the development team.