Shadowgrounds
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| Shadowgrounds | |
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| Developer(s) | Frozenbyte |
| Publisher(s) | Finland: Plan 1 North America: Meridian4 |
| Distributor(s) | Valve Software |
| Engine | Modified Storm3D-engine |
| Version | 1.05 |
| Platform(s) | PC (Windows) |
| Release date | November 11, 2005 (Finland, Germany) February 2006 (France, Benelux, Russia, Australia & New Zealand) |
| Genre(s) | Action |
| Mode(s) | Single player, single-system multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: M (Mature) 17+ Finland: 15 USK: 16+ |
| Media | 2 CD |
| System requirements | Windows XP/2000 1.5 GHz CPU 384 MB RAM GeForce 4 Ti / Radeon 9000 1 GB Free Hard Drive Space |
Shadowgrounds is a PC shooter game developed by Frozenbyte. It was released on November 11, 2005 in stores in Finland and Germany, and in Spring 2006 in the rest of Europe and North America. As well as being available through retail stores, the game began being distributed on Valve Software's Steam platform on May 8, 2006. The game is also available on Gametap as of January 31, 2008. A sequel, Shadowgrounds Survivor, was released in 2007.
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[edit] Overview
The game is a fast-paced top-down shooter reminiscent of the Alien Breed series. Like the earlier Finnish game Death Rally, Shadowgrounds presents a version of an anachronistic concept. The simplistic plot is that of a monster attack on a space colony.
Shadowgrounds uses light and darkness as vital components of gameplay and atmosphere, hence the name. The game is largely dark, and the hero carries a motion scanner and a flashlight with a regenerating but limited power supply (a common gaming cliché). There are ten weapons, all with three possible upgrades. Medpacks, weapons and ammunition are found in stores and near dead soldiers.
[edit] Plot
Mankind’s longest dream – to reach out to the stars – started to become reality in the 2050s, when technology research reached a point where a planet could be terraformed into a suitable home for man. Nine unmanned spaceships were launched with the purpose of starting a chainreaction of life on Ganymede, the third moon of the Jupiter system.
The Ganymede project was declared a success after three decades of hard research work. Manned spaceships were sent to Ganymede – which was still cold, battered and dark, but also a new beginning, a new home for hundreds of men and women. The human colony grew over the years, and now in the year 2096, over 8000 people live on Ganymede.
Step into the shoes of Wesley Tyler. He’s an ordinary man – if that’s what you call a senior mechanic at the IGTO’s Repair Base on Ganymede. He once was a security expert at a state-of-the-art fusion facility. But then things went wrong, accidents happened, and Wesley Tyler asked the wrong questions. He got the blame - and a dropship ticket to the outskirts of the Ganymede colony.
Now he works day in, day out at the IGTO Repair Base. Life is dark, cold and frustrating. But all that is about to change when the electricity system starts malfunctioning once again and Tyler is sent to check out what’s wrong...
[edit] Gameplay
Players explore indoor and outdoor facilities in order to complete a usually linear series of tasks (usually of the "FedEx" or "get to Point B" varieties, though other tasks include disarming force fields, enabling a radio transmitter, or fixing various broken machinery), while clearing the area of a chain of progressively more powerful creatures. Occasionally, other NPCs fight alongside the player, but, especially in the case of characters central to the plot, they are invulnerable and can be left to kill while the player recharges his flashlight or hunts for items.
In order to enable upgrades the weapons, players collect upgrade pieces from killing monsters. Players can also pick up weapons and ammunition and health packs and destroy a large amount of crates (another cliché of the genre). Finally, similar to Doom 3, there are PDAs and computer terminals scattered through the maps that serve to loosely advance the plot with some optional exposition.
There are a number of vehicles shown both in cutscenes and on the various maps, including an alien ship and an earth mover; however, none of these are player-drivable, and the game will switch to non-interactive cutscene if a task involves a vehicle.
[edit] Co-operative Mode
Cooperative gameplay, which was added late in development as a bonus for fans, is available within the single-player story. Cooperatively, one player controls Tyler via the keyboard and mouse, and one to three more can play as unnamed characters, using gamepads attached to the same computer. There is no Internet or LAN support.
There are a few other gameplay differences between the single-player and coopertive modes. The respawns that are available in single player mode are still a facet of the game; however, each time any player of the team dies, all players are respawned at a safe location, and one respawn from the respawn pool is used. Similarly, weapons collected are made available to all players, and upgrade parts are shared (ammunition, however, is not distributed).
[edit] Criticism
Alongside its "throwaway" story, Shadowgrounds was criticized for its unsuitable respawn point saving system. Saves are made at the start of each level, and from then on until the start of the next the player must survive on a limited number of lives and respawn points. The original game was one of short levels and no mid-game saves, but as later environments became larger, the respawn system was hastily added in the hope of avoiding tedious re-treading by players. However, particularly in later levels, there were not enough lives to comfortably complete given sequences. "It's one of those mistakes that we made simply due to lack of experience", stated Joel Kinnunen, one of Shadowgrounds's writers, and PR rep for Frozenbyte, in a post on the game's official forums[citation needed].
[edit] Soundtrack
Lordi guitarist Amen played guitar on the official Shadowgrounds soundtrack, which was composed by Ari Pulkkinen. The soundtrack has been praised in reviews.[citation needed]
[edit] Modifications
Frozenbyte has released extensive documentation on how to make modifications on the Shadowgrounds engine, as well as how to make custom maps and scenarios. While the first version of the official Level Editor, released on 29 June 2006, was only for retail versions of the game, users who purchased the game via Steam received access to the editor on 13 July 2006. With that release, all of the filesystem for the Editor was moved onto the Steam platform.
There currently is only one officially recognized third-party modification in development, entitled Shadowgrounds: Baxter's Sacrifice. However, the mod is suspected dead.[citation needed]
[edit] Screenshot gallery
 The player electrocutes an alien. |
 Shadowgrounds supports multiplayer cooperative play on one machine. |
