Beyond Shadowgate Review (Steam)

by Jim Smale · Published October 10, 2024 · Updated October 10, 2024

Beyond Shadowgate Review, The original design of the never-before-seen point-and-click adventure has been brought to life after 30+ years in the vault – Beyond Shadowgate! This new massive game (created by the designer of the original hit Shadowgate and a leading 8-bit adventure studio) is 5 TIMES BIGGER than NES Shadowgate!

Beyond Shadowgate Review Pros:

Beautiful modern 8 Bit graphics.
449.9MB Download size.
Steam achievements.
Own in-game achievements.
Full controller support.
Graphics settings – display, window scale, and cursor style.
Gamepad override option.
Time pressure can be set to default or infinite.
Three save slots.
Beyond Shadowgate is an enhanced and expanded version of the original NES version of the game.
Point and Click style gameplay.
You have a set of actions to interact with the game screens – move, look, use, take, open, close, hit, and speak.
Very old school but it still feels amazing to me.
Two cursor choices.
Having more power than before, the game offers animated scenes and actions.
The story is all text and gives a feeling of a choose-your-own-adventure.
Amazing Chiptune soundtrack.
The whole game can be played with just a mouse, the keyboard is used more for shortcuts to actions.
Save when you want.
Inventory is a list of collected goods, and learned spells to cast.
This is gaming comfort.
The DLCs (chargeable) include comics and a very good of age-inspired strategy guide.
Wisp is a character you can click on at any time to get helpful hints or a gentle nudge as to where to go.
The borders of the screen will flash when you enter a timed event.
Best played with headphones so you can block out the world and absorb everything.
The strategy guide also acts as a museum piece with high-definition scans of the box art, and original game screens and has a full walk-through of the game.
You have a small map like interface which helps with interacting with elements in the current screen.
It’s a game that is really hard to put down.
Very generous checkpoints so you don’t have to replay large chunks of the game.
Clean interface to use.
Puzzles throughout, all that changes really is if it’s clearly a puzzle or you have to think outside the box for a solution.
There is nothing wrong with playing the game using the DLC strategy guide as it may have a walk through but it’s not a step-by-step guide. Either way, it’s still old school to use a guide of sorts especially as they shutdown the Nintendo hotline.

Beyond Shadowgate Review Cons:

You young gamers may have a big learning curve compared to us older gamers, you have to be precise with actions and do literal things to progress and this will be a whole new experience for some.
This is more Steam but I hate how fiddly it has to be in order to find and use the strategy guides etc, granted it’s only once as I can move it around but still.
Timed events are brutal unless you go infinite which diminishes the experience.
The Wisp only changes her help at set points.
The game has no in-game tutorials and really does leave it to you to sort out and work out.