ShadowSide

I have a soft spot for walking sims when the atmosphere does the heavy lifting the gameplay refuses to do, and ShadowSide leans hard into that bargain. You play as Alex Carter, a small-town cop in the snowy provincial settlement of Nightwood, who suffers a car accident and wakes up somewhere deeply wrong. The first few chapters genuinely build tension: dark corridors, moody lighting, and the kind of CryEngine-rendered snowscapes that punch well above the price point. The engine choice is the single most defensible decision this developer made. Understand the structure before you commit. ShadowSide is a linear, first-person exploration game across roughly 15 chapters, and it sits very close to the walking-simulator end of the spectrum. There is no combat to speak of, no inventory management, and the object-inspection mechanic the store page advertises is inconsistent at best - some furniture can be searched, most cannot, and you cannot actually pick anything up. What you can do is move through largely corridor-style spaces and outdoor snowy scenes, scoop up scattered document collectibles, and hunt for hidden achievement triggers tied to treasure locations in chapter 5. The run speed is usable; the walk speed is not, so expect to hold sprint for most of the 4-5 hour runtime. The story is where ShadowSide loses the plot, quite literally. It opens as a grounded crime-thriller, pivots to supernatural horror, then lurches into a sci-fi register that never explains itself properly before credits. Across 15 chapters there are multiple sequences that feel like endings, then keep going. Character motivation dissolves. The audio is voiced exclusively in Russian, which is fine if you read subtitles and adds a certain atmosphere, but the subtitle timing is rough in places. The save system is obtuse at first and has been the source of early-quit frustration from multiple reviewers; once you understand its logic it is manageable, but there is no tutorial left in the current build to guide you through it - that section was removed in an update. Key bindings are also not rebindable and there is no control reference screen in-game. For genre fans who have burned through Gone Home, Ethan Carter, and AdroVGames' own earlier title Investigator, ShadowSide sits as a lesser but still atmospheric follow-up. The CryEngine visuals remain its strongest argument: snowy exteriors, creepy corridor interiors, and a handful of well-composed cutscenes make it screenshot-friendly and genuinely immersive in stretches. The multiple endings add a thin layer of replayability for completionists, and the hidden collectibles provide a secondary layer of engagement that is admittedly more interesting than the story by chapter 10. Steam rates it Mixed across roughly 360 user reviews at 64% positive, which is an honest number. Half the audience came away appreciating the atmosphere; the other half bounced off the incoherent narrative or technical rough edges like inter-chapter crashes. If you need dense decision-making, branching systems, or mechanical depth, this is not the game to scratch that itch. If you want a cheap, atmospheric trudge through a visually competent CryEngine world and you are willing to treat the plot as ambient noise rather than a story to follow, there is something here. Just do not start it expecting the narrative to pay off.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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