Modern Classics: Beyond Shadowgate (PC)
So here it is: the sequel I've been waiting for all my life. It's Beyond Shadowgate, the first canon sequel to the original Shadowagate! After 35 years, it has finally arrived!
As I said in my Shadowgate Memory Bank piece: The original Shadowgate was a special game for me. It had a profound impact on my life. It influenced and inspired me in many ways. It provided me unforgettable lessons on language and world-building and helped me to improve as a writer and as a creator. And it helped to shape who I was as an enthusiast.
You could say that it was a life-changing game.
That's why I was so excited when I learned that Zojoi, which was founded by two of Shadowgate's creators, was bringing a canon Shadowgate sequel to Steam. "They're finally doing it!" I thought to myself with exhilarated energy. "They're making the game I've been waiting for since 1990! They're going to tell the 'second story' I've been dreaming about since I was 12!"
When I expressed that sentiment, I wasn't trying to disparage Shadowgate 64 and 1993's Beyond Shadowgate or suggest that they weren't worthy series entry, no. It was just that neither of those games was able to provide me the type of Shadowgate experience that I was actually looking for. I wanted a game that played exactly like the original Shadowgate. I wanted a sequel that offered the same type of gameplay, visual presentation and narrative style. And Beyond Shadowgate, from what I saw of it, was going to do just that! So I was instantly psyched for it!
And on the day it released (Saturday, October 19th, 2024), I wasted no time in purchasing it and tearing into it!
Also, I made sure to create an authentic, classic atmosphere for the experience. I played the game every night at 7:00, right as the sky was taking on a darker shade and filling my computer room with a feint, eerie blue light. I kept the windows open so that I could hear the crickets chirping and allow for the sounds of nature to exert their sweetening influence. And I turned off all of the lights and fixed it to where the game and its imagery were the dominant visuals.
It helped that it just happened to be the ideal time of year to play such a game: right at the start of autumn, at a time when the air was cool but still the scent of summer lingered. That atmosphere, I've always thought, perfectly captures the essence of Shadowgate's world.
And resultantly, I had one of the most memorable gaming experiences I've had in a long, long time!
I'm so pleased by Beyond Shadowgate and my experiences with it, in fact, that I feel inspired to talk about it in-depth and cover it in the grandest way. So what I'm going to do in this piece, basically, is walk you through the entire game and all the while provide personal thoughts and tell you how I feel about certain aspects of the game.
So join me as I take a detailed look at an adventure that was 35 years in the making!
Let me start by giving you an overview of the game.
So Beyond Shadowgate is, like I said, the first canon sequel to the original Shadowgate. It was created by Zojoi, an independent gaming company based in central Virginia, and specifically a team that was comprised of a few budding developers and industry veterans (and company founders) Dave Marsh and Karl Roelofs, who formerly worked at ICOM simulations and helped to create Shadowgate.
Beyond Shadowgate is a point-and-click adventure game, and its presentation is heavily based on NES Shadowgate's. It features 8-bit-style visuals and music, a 256x225-pixel view window (it has an actual resolution of 400x225, but the flanking 144 pixels are comprised of wallpaper that changes in each chapter), and NES Shadowgate's adapted gameplay system. And you can control the cursor and input commands with either a mouse or a gamepad.
(I don't know if it's ironic or just weird that a modern sequel to a classic computer game is styled after an NES port whose visuals and interface had to be simplified because the console was less capable and more restrictive than PCs. But it tells you a lot about how popular and iconic NES Shadowgate is. It's the most recognizable version of the game, and even the people who created the original Shadowgate prefer its style of presentation.)
The game screen is broken up into three separate parts: the View Window, which shows your current location and the visual elements with which you can interact; the Inventory Window, which is where your obtained items and spells are stored; and the Command Window, which contains the commands that allow you to manipulate objects (in all three of the screen's windows), cycle through your inventory's pages (each of which holds six items), interact with the room-navigation box, and select the settings, save and quit options. The Command Window otherwise switches to a dialogue window whenever (a) the game needs to convey information or (b) you converse with other characters or examine objects.
Two notable changes have been made to the Command Window: The "Leave" command is gone because the game's item-management system has been updated to immediately discard used items (particularly keys) and items that have no secondary function. This works to prevent your inventory from becoming cluttered (there is, from what I can tell, no limit to how many items you can hold, so it's nice that the game helps you to keep the list tidy). And the "Move" command has been moved over to the main list. Its former space is now occupied by a "Map" command that displays the game's world map. At first, all you have is a single piece of this map, but you obtain more map pieces over the course of the game, and thus you open up more fast-travel points.
There are also some new quality-of-life features: You can now select to "Use" inventory items simply by clicking on them. You can move to adjacent screens by clicking on the View Window's edge portions (and thus forgo using the Move command), and you can get a description of an adjacent room by looking at the edge-portion that correlates to it. When one item is combined with another, its name changes to reflect its new appearance or function. And, as I said previously, a used item is automatically discarded if it has no secondary use.
The other change is that there's no general time-constraining mechanic, which is to say that you don't have to worry about collecting and lighting torches to stay alive. You can take as much time as you want to investigate and explore.
The game does, however, introduce a new "time pressure" mechanic. In certain instances, you'll be put in a position in which you're under immediate threat and you only have a limited amount of time (around 8-10 seconds) to respond to and deal with the threat. You'll know that time pressure is activated when the View Window's borders begin to glow red and the music suddenly turns urgent. If you take too long to react or incorrectly respond to the threat, you'll die. This mechanic is used infrequently, and it never requires you to perform complex actions, so you'll never feel stressed by its presence. It works well, and it's a nice addition to the system.
And like in NES Shadowgate, there's no real penalty for death. If you die, you simply get sent back a screen. And Beyond Shadowgate is even more generous because it allows you to retain any progress that you made before you died (manipulated objects remain in the state that you left them in, and you get to keep any item or items that you obtained before you died).
Beyond Shadowgate's world is open in nature, and you're free to move about it and explore it at your own pace. There are, though, a few isolated places that you can't revisit after you finish traversing them (I'll talk about more about these places in the main piece).
The game is quietly broken up into 11 chapters. You aren't notified when a new chapter begins, and you won't know what chapter you're on until you exit the game and take a look at the file-select menu. Note, though, that the chapter system doesn't put any limitations on where you can go. It's simply a narrative device.
A lot of backtracking is required, of course, but some of it is alleviated by the game's new fast-travel system, which allows you to quickly warp to certain locations--over to the "ferry stones" that you come across during your adventure. The system becomes exploitable when you learn a certain spell.
You can save your game at any time.
From the main menu, you have access to three save files and the settings, achievements and exit menus. Settings include display options (you can switch between full screen and four different window sizes), cursor style (you can select a clawed hand or a simple cursor), gamepad override (which you can allow or disallow), sound volumes, and time pressure options (select between normal or infinite amounts of time). From the achievements menu, you can, of course, view the available achievements; there are 40 of them in all, and you unlock them by completing challenges like escaping from certain areas, getting killed in certain ways, or examining certain items.
Beyond Shadowgate's premise and story were conceived 40 years ago. Elements of the original design documents were used in Shadowgate 64 and 1993's Beyond Shadowgate (both of which are non-canon), and Beyond Shadowgate fully develops them and fleshes them out. It shows you what was originally supposed to happen in a direct Shadowgate sequel.
The game has four different endings, and they range from joyous to disastrous. You can't get all of them on a single file. In any single play-through, you can only create opportunities to get three of the endings. If you want to get the missing fourth ending, you have to play through the entire game again and make sure to do something different at a certain point in the adventure (I'll explain what, exactly, that is later on).
The game's story is set 35 years after Shadowgate's, which told the tale of how the fearless adventure Jair defeated the Warlock Lord and the Behemoth within the living castle, Shadowgate. For many of the summers that followed, the land of Kal Torlin prospered and the events of Shadowgate began to slip from memory. But now evil has begun to stir again, and dark forces are scheming to bring the world to ruin.
Recently, Gwynenthell, which is Kal Torlin's shining jewel, lost its king, and consequently unrest and civil war have swept peace from the land. Amid the madness, a poor fenling named Del Thornburrow has been cast into a dreary dungeon at the mercy of murderous prison guards. His imprisonment represents the beginning of a journey that will push him to the edge of destruction and beyond.
So let's dig in and get this adventure underway! (Click a link to read the chapter-set of your choice.)
Chapters 1-3 | Chapters 4 and 5 | Chapters 6 and 7 | Chapters 8-10 | Chapter 11 | Alternate Endings and Closing Thoughts
Chapter 1: The Prison Escape
So we're the carefree Fenling Del Thornburrow, a thief who has been imprisoned for stealing a bauble from the hand of the Duchess of Traehelm. But because we don't really believe ourselves to be a thief, we tried to rationalize our crime by saying that we were merely trying to safeguard the trinket from the riffraff and lowlifes who were obviously trying to steal it for themselves. The duke didn't buy it and threw us in prison. And we didn't even get a fair trial! So now we're stuck in a cell and unable to prove our "innocence." Hoarse from shouting and bored beyond the limits of even the most tolerant fenling, we realize that we might as well focus on trying to find a way to escape.
So our goal in this first chapter is simply to find a way to escape from the prison and get back to our life of "vigilantism." (I'll be speaking from a first-person perspective in this piece, and occasionally I'm going to jump from the character's perspective to mine, as a player and series veteran. So mind the switching.)
We start the process by using one of the two items that we were allowed to keep: a small piece of flint, which is typically used to start fires. We us it to ignite the straw heap on the left by striking it with the flint three times. Our intention is to get the guard's attention and prompt him to open the door. Though, we know that doing so might cause him to assault us, so we have to set a trap first. We do that by moving the wooden bench over to the right (with the "Use" command).
It works! The guard, in his haste to storm in and find out what we're doing, trips over the bench and knocks himself unconscious (if we don't move the bench before starting the fire, there will be no such obstruction, and the jailer will rush over to us and choke us to death). He drops his keys as he falls, and we take advantage of the situation by picking up the keys and escaping the cell.
When we enter the desolate hall beyond, we make sure to close the door behind us and lock the brutish guard in the cell (if we don't do this, guard will recover and kill you). In this hall, we meet with the wisp, an ephemeral being that knows of our story and believes us to be on the same path. She decides to join us and act as our helper. At this point, a wisp icon appears in the Command Window's bottom-right corner. We can click it at any time to get advice from our new friend (calling upon the wisp is basically like clicking "Select" in NES Shadowgate). (Note that game keeps track of how many hints you receive. So you might not want to click on the icon if don't want to have your record blemished.)
The prison music isn't quite as evocative or as powerfully foreboding as Shadowgate's opening tune, but still it does a good job of creating a sense of mystery and making you feel like you're in danger. The writing also succeeds in doing that job. It tells you where you are by describing the sights, the sounds and the smells. It speaks of the prison's dark, despairing atmosphere and horribly unsanitary conditions and helps you to create a vivid visualization of the scene; and it does this consistently throughout the game.
We move north to cell block one, and immediately we see a minotaur in the distance. It's on patrol and currently traveling northward.
The theme in this segment is to avoid being caught by the minotaur. We don't want to get spotted by it or interact with it. What we want to do, mainly, is continue to use our jailer keys to open the non-barred cells and then duck into them and wait for the minotaur to pass by. Then, after the minotaur returns to his normal patrol, we want to pop out and continue heading north. We do this three times.
In the first cell, we find a skeleton. It's holding a strap. We take it. The moment we do this, we trigger the game's first time pressure situation. We hear the minotaur coming our way, and after our new wisp friend explains to us that we have to act quickly to avoid certain death, we decide that our best bet is to stealthily hide from the minotaur. We do that by simply closing the door. The minotaur's nose catches a trace of us, still, but after standing by the door for a while, it concludes that nothing suspicious is going on and continues its patrol. The wisp gives then gives us insight into what just happened and generally explains the time pressure mechanic. We must survive the "Reaper's Gaze," it says in summarization.
When we step back into the cell block, we notice that there are torches on wall. Being the series fans that we are, we feel that it's in our interest to take them. But the game refuses to let us do so, which is our assurance that it has no overarching time-constraint mechanic.
Then we move to to cell block two and enter the cell on the right. Immediately faced with the same time pressure situation. We deal with it the same way (by simply closing the door). Afterwards, we meet the cell's occupant, Edward, whose plight surprises us. He's not your typical prisoner, no. He's actually Edward of the King's Guard and master of the Artillery Division. He explains how he got here: As he and his unit were escorting the king to the southern docks, they were ambushed by assassins. Many members of the guard were killed, and others were imprisoned here and left to rot. He can tell, judging by the smell, that he's actually in Gwynenthell's prison, and thus he suspects that the ambush was an inside job ("Friends have become foes," he says). That's all he knows. But to help us in our bid to deal with the minotaur, he gives us a rope and urges us to use it to build a ranged weapon of some type.
We then step back into cell block 2 and head north, into cell block 3, and enter the cell on the left. Time pressure activates, and we respond by closing the door. This time, the cell occupant is Joshua, the king's counsel, who has also been imprisoned unjustly. They've all been imprisoned a long time, he says, and the captors intend for them to quietly die here. But he refuses. He gives us a stone that he pried from the wall and hopes that it'll help us in some way.
So it seems as though there's way more going on here than we know.
We step back into cell block three and move north, into the sentry post. There we come face to face with the minotaur. The moment we try to do anything in this room, the minotaur grabs its axe and prepares to attack. We decide that the only thing we can do to defend ourselves is fashion a weapon: a slingshot. We do that by combining the leather strap with the rope and creating a sling. Then we set our stone in the sling and prepare to attack. (Any fan of Shadowgate will instinctually know what to do here, but to newcomers, the answer might not be so obvious. For them, there's a subtle hint: The minotaur is wearing an eyepatch, and thus it's technically a "cyclops." And anyone with knowledge of mythology will know know how to take one of them out: create a slingshot and fire a stone!)
This is where we discover one of Beyond Shadowgate's innate qualities: It's very referential to Shadowgate (and the MacVenture games in general). And here's its first nod: an interaction that plays out exactly like one of Shadowgate's. As soon as we start twirling the sling, a magical influence takes over our body, and we cry out "Death to the philistine!" as we toss the stone.
The stone connects, of course, and instantly topples the minotaur. We resolve to never admit that the shot was lucky or explain why we called the minotaur a "philistine." So the game is also self-deprecating and willing to poke fun at some of silly things the original Shadowgate did.
After we knock out the minotaur, we open sentry post's northern cell and enter into it. Then we talk with its weary, disheleved occupant, who looks upon us with hope and introduces himself as King Aronde, the the Lord of Kal Torlin and warder of the southern seas. He explains that fiends have usurped his castle and have imprisoned he and his loyal confidants for unknown reasons. Without the royal seal, he says, his claim to the throne cannot be legitimate, and another ruler may claim it and occupy his lands.
Alarmed by the sound of the guard recovering, he rips the emblem off of his sleeve and gives it to us. He then tells us to show it to the barkeeper; that man and some others, he says, will recognize the symbol and show us the way into the castle. The royal seal, he explains, is obscured by sorcery. The scroll containing the disenchantment spell is behind a loose stone in a castle stairwell. He asks that we obtain the seal by locating his chamber's hidden room and using the scroll's words to unlock its secret. He urges us to go quickly.
So now we have a whole new mission!
There's a pointy tibia bone in his cell. We take it because we feel that it might help us to escape the prison. Then we head back to the sentry post and open the door that we didn't have time to unlock before. It leads to an empty cell whose most notable object is its grate. It's too heavy for us to open with just our hands, so we use the tibia bone to pry it open. Then we drop down the gap enter into the cavern below.
We fall an interminable distance before hitting the cold water below. Grasping for air, we bob our way over to the surface of a subterranean river. A moment later, we wash ashore. As we shiver and cough, we pick ourselves up and continue our escape.
There are two paths available in this river are, but only one of them is accessible. If we try to move rightward and pass over the flowing river, we'll drown and die (apparently fenlings can't swim). So we head north until we reach the beast den, which is home to a strange-looking creature (it looks like "mutation straight out of one your grandfather's famous tales," we think).
We can't do anything to hurt this creature, nor can we take any of its silver farthings (coins). If we attempt to do either, the creature will attack us and rip out a good-size portion of our neck.
As we gaze upon the pile of farthings, we think, for a moment, that maybe the creature will leave us alone if we give him our farthing. But we conclude that it's probably not a good idea to interact with such an untamed-looking creature. We have to be more crafty to neutralize it, we feel. So we decide to head back to the river area and think of a plan. The moment we start moving, though, time pressure activates. The creature wants our farthing and proceeds to chase after us!
We head south twice and retreat to the cavern's river. The creature is on our tail. Knowing that we have no way to hurt the creature and no place to hide, we think quickly and do something clever: We throw our farthing into the water. This prompts the creature to plunge into the river and start desperately foraging its bottom in an attempt to find and grab the coin. It lays face-down as it does this, so we're now able to use it as a bridge! We nimbly hop along its back and and move to the river's right side, which is comprised of a dry well. The we climb the well's rope and head up to safety.
After an exhausting climb, our hand grasps the well's lip right as the rope snaps (so there's no way for us to return to the cavern without jump down into it and killing ourselves in the process).
We emerge in a town, at the base of what's obviously a lucky wishing well. As we gather ourselves, we're reminded of the king's words. We must find the seal, expose the traitors, and save the kingdom. It's a lot to ask of one guy, we realize, but we're ready to respond to the challenge. We steel your nerves and head toward Gwynenthell's capital city. Our determination to help is strong, though there is a part of us that senses that we'll wind up regretting this decision.
This ends the first chapter.
And it's a very good opening chapter. It's interesting and engaging. It puts you in a position in which you're intrigued because you don't know where, exactly, the adventure is going to take you. You have ideas of where it might take you, yeah, but you're not sure of how you'll get to those places or what the journeys will entail.
Chapter 2: The Town of Gwynenthell
So our goal now is to locate the barkeep and show him the king's emblem, which, if the king is correct, will prompt him to show us a way into the castle. Naturally it's not so simple, and we'll have to first earn his trust by doing a series of jobs for both he and his fellow citizens. So basically this chapter is a long series of fetch quests.
Before we proceed, we examine the well area and see that there's a silver coin on the ground. It's a bit hard to see because it blends in with the rocks, but still we spot it and proceed to pick it up. Then we head southwest of the well and enter into the town square.
From here, we move toward the center building, the town inn, and enter into it. As we do so, we witness a scene: A cloaked figure converses with a stout-looking man. We get close and listen in on their conversation. The cloaked figure, in a whisper, tells the man to "place the wares in his bed chamber."
"No more delays," the figure says. "Either he dies or you do."
The figure then storms out and ignores your presence as he passes you.
Moments later, the stout-looking man exits the inn and bumps into you on the way out, nearly knocking you to the floor. When you get up, you yell "Jerk!" at him, but it's too late; he's already long gone. The barkeep, sensing your anger, tells you not to mind the stout-looking man, "O'Vyn," who is as crooked as gnarled root. He wormed his way into the position of trade minister, and he's been mucking things up ever since then.
The barkeep wonders why we're here. Before we respond, we ponder the threats that we overheard. Thereafter, we show him the emblem. Startled, he tells us to put it away lest we'll be killed. He says, though, that he'll consider inspecting it if we give him a coin for his trouble. So we give him the coin we found by the well (there's another coin laying by the nearby fountain), explain the events of our prison escape, and then show him the emblem again. He recognizes it as the king's, but he says that looks can deceive. Gwynenthell has changed, he tells us, and friends are rare. And since it's hard to trust anyone under these conditions, he wants us to prove that the emblem is real. He calls over his daughter, Terina, and has her offer us a drink. We take the cup, and as we try to take a sip from it, a note falls out of the cup. The note expresses the barkeeps desire for us to prove the legitimacy of the emblem by showing it to the curio shop's owner.
This is where the fetch-quest chain begins.
The music tells us that we won't be under threat here. It's calming in tone, and it gives us the sense that the town is safe and that no real danger is lurking in this part of the game.
We head the curio shop, which is over the left, and show the tavern note to its owner. He'll evaluate it, he says, but his services aren't free; he'll do the job if we can retrieve his golden dagger from the buffoonish weapons-shop owner. So we head over to the weapons shop, which is on the town's far-right side, and speak with its owner. He says that the curio-shop owner is a crook and that he'll do no favors for the man. But he'll give the dagger to us if we do him a favor--do something that he has no courage to do on his own: tell the Rusted Inn's barmaid that he fancies her. So we go back to the inn and relay the message to the barmaid. She blushes and says the she fancies him, too, but she can't be with him unless she gets a blessing to do so; and since she can't leave the bar for hours, she requests that we talk to the town's monk, instead, and get his favor so that she might be able to meet with weapon shop's owner that night. So we head to the town's southeast portion.
Along the way, we come across a fountain that looks identical to the one we, the players, saw in the Shadowgate's lab area. Seeing it (and a few other familiar-looking objects) makes me wonder if people looted the castle in the aftermath and took some souvenirs and mementos.
So we pass through the courtyard and head right, to the temple. At its door, we meet with the monk and ask for a blessing. He's happy that the barmaid and the weapons-shop owner are finally getting together, but at the moment, he can't give us a blessing because he doesn't have his charm! He gave it to a soldier. So we need to find the solder and retrieve the charm.
Luckily, the soldier is close by. We find him by heading back to the courtyard and heading north, to the Gwyenthell castle's entrance. He's guarding it. We ask him about the charm, and he tells us about how unlucky he's been lately (he lost his entire troop a few days earlier) because he gambled away his lucky charm. A card-playing scoundrel has it, and he wants it back. He asks us to get it for him.
We find the man in question in the inn (he's in the back room, whose presence is easy to miss). When we talk to him, he says that he only plays for money and says not to bother him if we don't have any. Fortunately we do! We have a silver coin. We give it to him.
After taking our coin, he challenges us to a game of hi-lo. If we win, he says, he'll give us a prize. So we proceed to engage in a game of actual hi-lo. To win, we have to guess if the deck's next card is higher or lower than the previously-turned card, and we have to do so five times in a row. (You don't have to worry about losing. The game gives you infinite tries.)
This is a theoretically easy challenge, but it turns out not to be. This is the case because the game seems rigged against us. There are plenty of instances in which, say, we'll draw a 1 when the current card is a 2 and we guess "high." It can take a while to win (I've heard of people taking up to 20 minutes to win).
When we finally win, the man gives us the lucky charm, which he won from the guard. We return to the castle entrance and give it to guard. He gives us the charm in return. We take the charm to the temple entrance and give it to the monk. He blesses it. Then we return to the inn and give the blessed charm to the barmaid. She smiles widely as she accepts it. She then gives us a hairpin and tells us to take it to her beloved.
So we take the hairpin over to the weapons-shop owner. His face erupts into a smile when we give it to him. "She does love me!" he shouts. He celebrates by reaching over the counter, picking us up, and tightly hugging us. Then he says "Bless you!" before delivering a kiss to our nose. Subsequently he graciously hands us the dagger.
We take it over to the curio shop and hand it to the owner. He's thankful to have it back, and he says that he'll happily give it to us if we pay him a gold coin. We don't have a gold coin, so we have no choice but to part with the dagger. As he promised, he examines the emblem and determines that it's authentic. He gives it back to us along with a note, which he wants us to show to the barkeep and no one else, lest our life will be at risk.
So we return to the inn and show the curio note to the barkeep. He acknowledges that we're telling the truth and celebrates the fact that the king still lives. He tells us to go visit the town smithy, Burak, and repeat a coded message: "Prevail." He then gives us the key to the smithy's workplace.
We head to the town's right side and use the key to open the workplace's door, then we head inside and repeat the message to Burak. A wide grin forms across his face, and he says, "I knew it!" Then he opens the door to the workplace's back door and tells us what to do to get to the castle: From the next room, he says, we must find our way out into a cave and then find a castle entrance amongst the rocks. "Use the map for help," he adds.
When we enter the back room, the door slams shut behind us, and suddenly we hear unrecognizable voices shouting orders at the smithy to open the back door. We suspect that the royal guard is looking for us.
We hear keys fumbling at the lock and then the sound of them hitting the floor. We realize that this is the smithy's way of buying us time to escape the room. At that moment, time pressure activates. We have a limited amount of time to find our way out of the room. Luckily, it's easy to do: There's an obvious trap door in the floor. We simply open its slide lock and then swing the trap door open. Then we exit through it. That's all we have to.
The heavy trap door slams shut behind us, ensuring that we won't be followed.
We find ourselves in a secret cave tunnel. As we look around, we see a torn parchment lying in its middle portion. We pick it up and discover that it's a map part--the one that the smithy was talking about. And now we can see the area of the world we're traversing by clicking on the Command Window's newly added "Map" command. It appears above the navigation box.
When we exit the cave, we arrive at the forest's edge. From here, we look to the north and see a makeshift camp that's built along the city wall's outskirts. It flies the banner of Lord Jair (the hero of Shadowgate). We guess, from gauging the camp's size, that it has somewhere around 50,000 troops that are ready to lay siege to Gwynenthell. So we have to hurry!
There are two paths here: One leads to the camp, and the other takes you along a side road that winds back toward the castle. We absolutely do not want to go the camp. If we do, we'll be met by Jair's Westland soldiers, who will assume that we're a spy for Gwynethell's usurpers and proceed to club us and then behead us the moment we wake up.
So obviously Jair has learned of King Aronde's usurpation and isn't happy about it. He's clearly an ally of the king.
So we take the rightward side path and arrive at a hidden entry. All we see here are a number of large stone slabs in the shape of a sun and some strange circular markings on the ground. From simply observing the scene, it's easy to guess that we have to interact with the stone slabs in a specific way and that if we fail to do so, we'll probably be impaled by whatever's waiting to poke out from the markings. (And we're correct: We do die via impalement if we don't figure out the exact way in which to compress the slabs.)
The problem is that there's seemingly no way to determine how we should interact with the slabs. Our single item, the jailer keys, offers no clue, and there's no one around to provide us a hint (save for the wisp, who we're going to ignore because we're seasoned adventurers, and we don't need any stupid hint systems!).
This is where we have to start thinking outside the box a bit. Specifically, we have to look at our newly obtained map piece and study it. When we do so, we notice that it contains a sun that looks suspiciously like the symbol on the entry's wall. Some of its rays are darkly colored. That's the clue! So we compress the slabs that correspond to the darkened rays and then press the center slab. Doing this causes the machinery to our left to activate, and machines' operation prompts the entry's stone doors to slide apart.
We're in! (Note that the darkly colored rays' configuration is randomized in each play-through.)
So yeah--this second chapter is little more than a series of fetch quests, and thus it really slows the game down. It had me worried when during my first play-through. I thought that it might be an indicator of what was to come. Thankfully it wasn't. It was intentionally designed to be slow in pace. It was the start of a gradual build-up to more exciting events.
Chapter 3: Gwynenthell Castle Infiltration
So we're now in the castle, and our goal, at this time, is to find the hidden scroll and somehow use the words within it to obtain the king's royal seal. The process, of course, entails a lot of work.
And we're in our first real Shadowgate-looking room: a narrow secret tunnel that contains a suspicious lever. Games of this type have a way of making you feel as though a simple act of flipping a switch will somehow kill you, but doesn't happen here, no. We can easily and safely flip this switch, and our doing so causes the stone door in the north to slide open.
The door leads into the castle's first floor and specifically the vestibule. As we enter into it, we remember being dragging through this hall when we were being taken to prison. And at this moment, the king's words again ring in our ear: Fiends have usurped the throne, he told us, and its up to us to find the scroll of disenchantment and obtain the royal seal from a hidden chamber.
We hear guards moving about down the hall and decide to keep a low profile.
The music here is mysterious and cautionary in tone. It makes you feel uneasy. You don't know if it's safe to be here, and you have no idea if you can be caught or not or what might happen to you if you do get caught.
At the moment, there isn't much that we can do on this floor (outside of engaging in fun activities like signing our name in the entryway's guestbook and getting ourselves killed in the northern grand hall by moving too close to one of the suits of armor, accidentally knocking it down, and getting our head skewered by its halberd!). Though, while we're in the foyer on the floor's far-right side, we can remove the wooden bar that's holding the prison's door closed and then visit the king and update him on our progress.
The foyer's other door leads into the kitchen, but it's currently locked, and we don't have any keys. So we take the only other available path: the stairway in the northeast.
This spiraling staircase leads to the second floor. There's an obvious loose stone in its wall, but we can't do anything with it at this point; it's too heavy to be moved with bare hands. So we continue moving upward.
And we arrive at the upper hall. It offers five separate paths, but the only ones we need to be concerned about at the moment are the two to the north. We start with the hall's right door. It leads into a servant's lounger.
There are two things that we can do here: take the coat (a "livery" that's described as a "Westland servant's uniform") and then open its pocket to find a gold coin (which we can use to buy something from the curio shop); and take a cook book off of the book rack and then open it to find a cook's key.
Then we retreat back to the upper hall and head north, to the trade hall. Here we run into a "gaunt" figure. He approaches us and tells us, in a raspy voice, that we're a peasant whose very presence sullies these halls. He introduces himself as the royal chancellor and demands that we show deference by bowing our head to him and addressing him as "Sir Belezsarr." If we don't, he says, we'll be reprimanded. We obey, begrudgingly, and bow as he walks past us and leaves the area.
There are two doors here. We start by going through the one on the left. It leads to the trade office. It's a counsel chamber whose tobacco scent suggests that it was recently occupied.
There are two obtainable items here. The first is the history book. We take it and read it. It contains a passage about Prince Torlin, the found of Gwynenthell. It speaks of the manner in which his forces defeated an army of barbarians and the honorable way in which he saluted his fallen comrades.
The other obtainable item is behind the wall map, which looks identical to the one that appeared in Shadowgate's library (this one has markings that illustrate how Gwynenthell is currently surrounded by hostile forces). We notice that the map is loosely attached to the wall, so we remove it; and we find that it was covering a hole containing an iron key. We take the key.
The document on the table can't be taken, but reading it provides us some insight into the castle officials' current situation: It speaks of their plan to defend the city from an all-out attack. It addresses O'Vyn and explains to him that Lord Jair's advisors didn't buy the story that the king was kidnapped and has come with his army. When Jair discovers the truth, the document's author believes, he'll seek vengeance, so it's important to quickly dispose of the prince and pin the crime on him. The document instructs O'Vyn to carry out the deed using Veldar's mandragora (I don't know who Veldar is, exactly, but he's obviously one of the usurpers). Also, it tells him to subsequently execute the king. The author explains that he has fled the scene and suggests that the document's intended audience, Jalek, do the same.
So that's the usurpers plan in action.
We head back to trade hall and go through the door on the right. It leads to the trade room, which is a castle official's bedroom. We notice that the bed's front panel has a keyhole in it. So we try using our iron key in it. And it works! The panel opens and reveals a hidden compartment.
The compart contains a "secret book." We read it and discover O'Vyn's motive: "Veldar says that King Aronde's embargo on Kal Zathynn will be my death!" he states. He disdains the embargo because it allows the Westland Trading House of Quicet to capture Veldar's customers and diminish their strength. If he doesn't stop the king, the House of Veldar will expose the exclusive trade contracts that he gave in exchange for his properties!
Later in the book, he speaks of a dream that he had. It was one in which a shadowy figure told him how to solve all of his problems and silence the king. The figure revealed to him the warden's secrets, and he discovered that all of them are true! So now he's using these secrets to blackmail the warden. Also, he hired bandits and convinced the warden to install a special jailer to guard the prison after they confine the king there. "We attack when the king travels south," he says.
Though, O'Vyn can't shake the feeling that his thoughts aren't his own.
And as we read the journal's final entry, we learn about O'Vyn's current mental state. He awakens in a cold sweat every night, fearing capture. Elryth (one of the king's men) isn't as stupid as he was presumed to be and suspects that something is up. This, we think, proves that O'Vyn and Veldar are traitors. But we don't believe that there are many people to whom we can safely show this evidence. It's hard to know who to trust in this place; we don't know which castle occupants are loyalists and which are usurpers. We decide to take this book with us. It becomes our "evidence."
So basically the king interfered in O'Vyn's business, so he conspired to remove the king and imprison him in his own castle. And it's likely that he's being controlled by an unknown party.
We head back to the upper hall and to the left, into the alcove. There we come across a guard. He mistakes us for a delivery boy and asks if us if we have the wine that "he" is expecting. We don't.
So we head back downstairs, to the foyer, and use the cook's key to open the kitchen door.
This is one of those rooms that's filled with stuff that we can collect at different points. At this moment, we can take the silver platter, the spoon, and the invoice that's hanging on the left wall (the food items are useless to you unless you like reading food-consumption-based flavor text). We want to take the flour sack, also, but we can't because it's too heavy. So we'll have to come back for it later on, when we figure out a way to carry it.
Of immediate interest to us is the invoice. It asks a very high price for a bottle of the king's wine, which is ready to be picked up. We decide to carry out that task ourselves. We travel south, to the castle's entrance, and use its control mechanism to open the front gate (doing this gives us convenient access to the town), and then we head over to the inn. When we arrive there, we show the invoice to the barkeep. He accepts it and hands us a disappointingly unremarkable bottle of wine. Then he applauds us for our successful castle infiltration and encourages us to do our best to rescue the king.
While we're out and about, we stop in the curio shop and give the gold coin to its owner. He gives us the golden dagger in exchange!
Then we begin to travel back to the castle's second floor. On our way there, we make two stops: We go into kitchen and use the golden dagger to cut open the flour sack and then empty it out and take it. Then we stop in the spiral stairwell and use the spoon to wedge the loose brick out of the wall. The hidden space beyond contains a bound scroll. It's the one that the king was talking about! It says that the royal seal is proof of sovereignty and that only a king may bestow it upon another. With the shimmering king as witness, is says, one king shall say the spell of disenchantment to the other: "Tar Gwynthal." It's our first spell! Its description tells us of its use: "In the presence of a shimmer, this spell will dispel an enchantment and reveal what is hidden."
So now we need to find the seal.
We return to the alcove and give the wine bottle to the guard. He says that the prince is currently absent and invites us to enter his room and leave the wine there. The he takes his leave and suggests that we be quick about it and close the door on the way out. So now we have free reign of the place.
We open the door and enter into the king's chamber.
There are two things that we can do here: We can take the lamp that's resting on top of the wooden nightstand, and we can pull open the nightstand's drawer and take the item that it contains.
The drawer's item is the mandragora that the document spoke of! It immediately begins to shriek. We've earned its ire, and it won't be long before its screams drive the soul from our body! Time pressure activates, and it becomes urgent for us to find a way to get rid of the mandragora. We do the obvious thing: We throw it in the fire! That causes it to burn up. As it does so, embers from its flailing limbs fly out and ignite the nearby wall tapestry, which burns away and reveals a magnificent suit of armor.
When we interact with the armor, we find that we can move its gauntlets and helmet. It's an obvious puzzle! There aren't many possible permutations, so we quickly discover that the correct thing to do is to point the right gauntlet and the helmet at the northern wall. Doing this causes a secret passage to open up!
We enter into the king's passage and see three paintings hanging on the wall. When we interact with them, the descriptions make it obvious which of them are hiding secrets. Taking down the middle painting (which depicts King Leon, one in the majestic line of Gwynenthell rulers) reveals a peep hole; it allows us to look into Belezsarr's chamber and spy on him.
Belezsarr stands quietly in the room's middle portion, and he slowly raises his arms and begins to chant. Thereafter, he transforms into a hideous lizard-like creature! Then he speaks and tells his "master" that there have been setbacks but still everything is going as planned. The "druid," he informs his master, has left his tomb unguarded and is currently in the castle tower. He says that the pawns are of no further use, so now he's going to move on to the plan's next phase. Before the autumnal equinox hits, he's going to travel through Torlin Forest, across the barren, and over the Gatekeeper Mountain and carry out a mission to retrieve the master's staff and usher him back into this world!
That's tomorrow, we realize, so we don't have much time! We have to follow him! It's urgent for us to find the royal seal and convince the prince to search the prison!
So that's what's going on here: Belezsarr's secretly behind the usurpation plot. He's the mastermind. And now that the first phase (inciting a major conflict that keeps all of the land's armies busy and thus distracted) is complete, he's headed to Shadowgate to find Talimar's staff and quietly bring the Talimar, the Warlock Lord, back to this world! "Clever little villain," we think.
We interact, also, with the left painting--the one that depicts a beautiful woman. Its description tells us that it has an unusual bump on the bottom of its canvas. So what we do is take the painting off of the wall, turn it around, and use our gold dagger to slice through its back portion. Doing this reveals a hidden key. It's the king's key, which, as we suspect, opens the door to the left. Secret stairs lie beyond it.
The path ahead is dark, and we're advised not to travel forward without a light. Luckily we have a lantern. We hang it on the small metal hook that's jutting out from the wall's top portion. This provides us the illumination that we need to see what's ahead and safely move forward. (We have to remember to come back here later and retrieve the lantern. It's one of those items that has a secondary use.)
We travel up the stairway and enter into an antechamber. This room's centerpiece is an elaborately detailed mirror, which is described to shimmer in an unusual way. So it sounds like an object on which we should use our new spell! When we do so, the mirror's face melts away and reveals a hidden compartment that contains the royal seal! We've finally found it! We take it immediately.
A button lies behind the seal. When we press it, the door on the left opens up.
Beyond the door is the throne room (so the king's passage is a shortcut to it). The prince, Elryth, sits upon its throne. Our wisp friend advises us to act quickly and choose our words wisely. We have to prove to him that the king lives, it says, and if we dally, we risk getting killed by the guards. We should not approach him unless we have evidence that proves the existence of a traitor who imprisoned the king in the dungeon below. Fortunately we have that evidence. So we approach the prince, who has been inspecting us cautiously, and speak to him.
He gets up close to us and tells us not to try his patience. If we have reason for him to trust us, he says, we must show it to him now (there's no time pressure, surprisingly).
First we present him the royal seal. Upon seeing it, he shouts "By the One!" and wonders how we came to hold the seal, whose hiding place is only known by his brother, the king. "The king must live!" he believes.
He demands that we explain ourselves and waits with anticipation. We present him the evidence. He thumbs through it, and as he reads of the plot, his face becomes painted with righteous fury. He commands his guards to seize O'Vyn and take him alive. When he calms down, he asks us to bring him to his brother. So we lead him down into the dungeon (via the grand hall, which, we learn, was south of the throne room). As we enter into it, we're confronted by the minotaur, and time pressure activates!
But this time pressure instance is scripted. Before we can do anything, the royal guards take the beast out with their crossbows.
The prince deduces that the minotaur was part of the conspiracy, then he urges us to take him to the king. When we enter the royal cell, the king joyfully greets us and asks us who locked him in there. We explain to him the usurpers' plot. With great anger, he calls O'Vyn and Veldar "scoundrels," and then he tells his brother to release him. At that moment, we collapses from exhaustion.
We awaken in the throne room, whose throne is now rightfully occupied by King Aronde. His brother is at his right hand. While smiling, Aronde commends our efforts and gives us a reward: the treasury key. We can use it, he says, to open the treasury door and take possession of an item--a pouch of riches--that was set aside just for us. He tells us not to take the gift lightly and warns us to avoid taking any of the treasury's other items. Also, he bestows upon us the title of "King's Squire." Recognizing our fear that the title is conferring upon us unwanted responsibilities, he laughs and tells us that it's only an honorary title. Then he tells us that he's going to speak to Lord Jair and quell tensions. Jair's army, his says, has already withdrawn from the forest and will not return.
As Aronde motions a servant to show you out, Elryth states that he will personally conduct the search for the conspirators.
So now we're finally free to move on!
First, though, we head upstairs to the treasury vault to get our reward. We head into the treasury (whose lack of riches makes is apparent that the kingdom has fallen on hard times) and take what's obviously meant for us: a small purple pouch. We open it to find that it contains an emerald, a sapphire, and a pearl. We're quite happy with this haul of valuable gems. (If we try to take any other items, the guards confront us and either arrest us or skewer us with their spears.)
Before we head out into the forest, we stop back in the town (and find that the scene has changed to mid-day) and visit the weapons shop. There we exchange the sapphire for a crossbow. At the moment, we can't buy any of the other weapons because they're too expensive. We need the arrow quiver, though, or else our crossbow is useless. But it's out of reach at 20 silver quivers. So we'll have to find a way to earn that amount.
And because we notice that the temple door is now open, we head into the temple to see what's up. Upon entering, we notice that it's occupied by a distinguished-looking man who's standing silently in prayer. It's Lord Jair! (He looks exactly like he did on the Shadowgate computer versions' title screens!)
He approaches us and begins to speak. He recognizes us as the person who saved the king and prevented a battle. He thanks us for that and bows gratefully. We humbly accept his thanks. When we speak with him a second time, he tells us that there is unrest across the lands and that he has heard people speak of him in places he hasn't been. He suspects that someone is impersonating him and asks that we report on any encounter with such an individual.
We note that the temple's centerpiece is a statue of "The One," which represents their god; it holds a rod in its right hand. A book rests on the altar below it. We open it and begin reading a record from the book of miracles that are attributed to The One. It speaks of an unknown queen whose land had come under hard times because of a foul enchantment-cast fog that twisted roads, shrouded the kingdom from view, halted trade, and starved her people. The queen, in an attempt to save her kingdom, offered a rod and some gold to the statue of The One, then she placed her glasses upon the altar and spoke a prayer for piercing vision. The One acknowledged her prayer, and thus magic flowed into her lenses. With her new enchanted glasses, she was able to see through the fog and lead caravans back to her people. (This seems worth remembering!)
With all of that business out the way, we head back to the castle's vestibule and exit the castle via its secret alcove. This takes us back to the forest area. The game then confirms that Jair has withdrawn his army from Gwynenthell and that the path to Torlin Forest is now open to us. The encampment to the north has since been abandoned, so now we can safely pass through it.
And this is where the story-heavy Chapter 3 ends. Honestly, I really like what it does. It's investigatory in nature, and thus it reminds me a lot of Deja Vu. It has the same premise: uncovering the details of a complicated plot and bringing the perpetrators to justice. I suspect that this is what the game's creators were going for.
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