Even the visual overhaul isn't all that terribly impressive the hand-painted backdrops have an almost primitive look to them, lacking detail and clarity, the colors are drab and most of the rooms are empty and lifeless, not the sort of thing you'd expect from a 'living castle.' His habit is to state what needs to be done rather than how to go about doing it regarding a skeleton on a rock in the middle of a lake, for instance, he told me only that I should probably check it out, not exactly the most useful insight ever. Some very basic elements of modern gameplay are missing, like the ability to rearrange inventory items, and despite the obvious need for an effective hint system, your companion Yorick-a wisecracking floating skull with glowing eyes-really isn't very helpful at all. That may be precisely what a lot of old-time Shadowgate fans are looking for, but it's also the root of its real weakness: It's an anachronism that forgoes any kind of enhancement that would properly bring it into the current era.

A statue of angels on a parapet all but screamed out for my attention, but not only did I not need to unravel its mystery, I literally could not yet nothing prevented me from pointlessly sinking a lot of time into trying to figure it out. Some doors won't open, many inventory items have no function and there are even puzzles can't be solved because they're 'inactive,' but there's no indication when this is the case or what can safely be ignored. The addition of selectable difficulty levels makes life a little easier for newcomers, but it also introduces an unexpected element of confusion by simply locking out big chunks of the game at the 'easy' level. Some of the puzzles are wickedly obtuse-one in particular I couldn't make heads or tails of even after I'd 'solved' it with a walkthrough-and hints are scattered, sparse, and vague. In the 80s, there were relatively few games to play and I was more tolerant of mean-spirited design, but 30 years later it just feels directionless not in the sense of an open-world game that offers complete freedom of action, but in the less-admirable way that it makes zero effort to communicate important information.

It's effectively a timer, and much like the torches, it's tough luck if you die before discovering a cure. At one point I was stricken by an evil curse, but I didn't actually know I was cursed (and, more to the point, that I needed to find a cure) until it had already taken a serious toll on my body.

It's a harsh game, especially at the Master level, which most closely matches the gameplay of the original, and it remains every bit as opaque and unforgiving as it was back in the day. But the fundamentally punishing design of Shadowgate, which originally came out in 1987, hasn't aged particularly well.

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