Shadow Archery

Genre: Shooting Gallery Game

Players: 1

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Review:

Shadow Archery is a Shooting Gallery Game released on the Wii U in 2018. This game is the follow up to 2016’s Shadow Archer, and uses much the same premise, but instead of being a Top-Down Arcade-style game, it’s a Shooting Gallery Game. Once again, much as in Shadow Archer, players take the role of the titular archer, who must fend off hordes of spiders and other beasts in a dark forest.

This game uses simple, 8-bit-style pixel art 2D visuals, once again backed by a chiptune rendition of the third movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on repeat. I suppose if you already have the asset, you might as well re-use it, right?

The gameplay here is extremely simple. Spiders wander around the screen and you shoot them, either by aiming a cursor using the Wii remote’s motion control, or by tapping the touchscreen. Each method has its benefits and drawbacks – the touchscreen makes things much easier to aim, but all you need to do to pick up bonuses when using the Wii remote is move the cursor over them as opposed to tapping them on the touchscreen.

Unfortunately, the problem this game has is the same as the problem Shadow Archer had, despite the change in genre – it’s shallow and repetitive. In fact, these issues mat be even worse here, since your character can’t move, enemies spawn en masse even faster, and the damage sponge enemies are difficult to fend off even if you see them approaching.

I applaud the folks behind this game for experimenting and trying something a bit different, but the end result is a game that just is not at all fun. It’s tedious, repetitive, frustrating, and simply not worth your time. Do not get Shadow Archer.

tl;dr – Shadow Archery is a Shooting Gallery Game and follow-up to Shadow Archer where players take the role of the titular archer shooting arrows at spiders in a forest, but this time either using the Wii remote’s motion control or tapping on them using the touchscreen. Unfortunately, the change in genre hasn’t made this gameplay any less tedious, frustrating, or shallow. In fact, if anything, it’s even worse now.

Grade: D-

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