Shines Over: The Damned is a deliberately ambiguous game, in many ways it reminded me of Myst, an atmospheric creepy experience, where you are led through various locations, having to solve puzzles.

Shines Over: The Damned is a mysterious puzzle game

You find yourself traversing a nightmare realm, full of demons. The game is played in first person, and you have really only jump and run to get through. There is a dog and various lights which help guide you, which is helpful as the game is very dark, making navigation difficult. The controls also felt more imprecise than they should have been.

Some of the puzzles are just random, while others do present you with a clue about what you’re supposed to be doing. There are globes to collect. Collect them all and the game will give you a hint.

The puzzles are variable in their difficulty, some are random and so you just must try various combinations without any game logic offered up. The boat ride is without doubt the most difficult portion of the game, more difficult than it needs to be for such a short experience. That said the game allows you to try again and again without any penalties.

Traverse a nightmare realm, full of demons

It’s a difficult experience to decide its value. The music is beautiful, and the overall audio experience is best through headphones. The visuals, though dark are intriguing, but the game has no story. You don’t even get a name. The game doesn’t tell you why you are doing what you’re doing and even when you get to the end you are still no more illuminated over what you have just done.

It took me about an hour to complete, half of that was the overly difficult boat ride. Overall, it felt like a proof of concept experimental piece.

6

Charles Packer