With its visuals between sepia and monochrome, the tenderly melancholic music, and the gloomy basic tenor, it goes in a similar direction as these successful indie titles in terms of staging. At the same time, the game largely dispenses with the skill aspects of Limbo, the micro-management of FAR: Lone Sails or Little Nightmares' stealth aspects - light and shadow puzzles, crate-pushing tasks, and perspective gimmicks take their place.
Last but not least, and this brings us to the story about a little girl's fears, Shady Part of Me joins a fairly young group of video games that deal with the complex of topics around fears, self-perception, or mental health in general. Although Shady Part of Me relies on a very, too vague narrative over the entire four-hour game time, the scenarios (including a child's room, a hospital), the dialogue between the protagonist's different selves, and the game's division into "sessions" leave no doubt about the direction the French developers are taking with their debut work.
The main character is voiced by Hannah Murray, who is known as Gilly from Game of Thrones.
The mechanics are explained in a variety of competent, most logical, and sometimes even creative ways: If the 3D character moves a block closer to a light source, for example, it grows in height in the 2D plane. Elsewhere, a switch appears only in the 2D silhouette area - if it is activated, the position of a lamp change in the 3D world - and the polygon girl can continue walking. For just as her 2D projection can be crushed by black shadows, she has trouble with brightly lit areas in her 3D world. Every few virtual meters, usually after exactly one headbutt, some sort of target area must be reached on both levels for the game to continue.
If you go out in bright light or get hit by a shadow block, you can rewind as often and as long as you want via the shoulder key. This is how you undo jumpers or correct your timing when flipping a switch. This makes Shady Part of Me an extremely easy game in terms of skill. At the same time, this solution is more elegant than simply restarting at the edge of the platform in kid-friendly Kirby hops or the realism-undermining rewind features in various Forzas or, more recently, even FIFA 21. The team achieved the goal formulated by art director Marc Lericolais "to make each environment look like a living sketch just waiting to be explored" only in terms of visuals. The beautiful, stylish graphics come pleasantly close to the "preliminary drawings or sketches that were sometimes simply scribbled in the corner of a notebook" and never get boring, despite the always similar color tones.
Conclusion
The Shady Part of Me is an approximately four-hour-long, always pleasantly playable, nicely designed indie title - and quite respectable as the debut work of a small studio. For that, the conversations and words remain too superficial and the story too vaguely outlined. Those who already had a lot of fun with Rain or The Shadowrunner and the Riddles of the Dark Tower should risk a look, despite my cautious assessment.
