Back in December, during GaymerX, I had the pleasure of meeting Stuart Bradley Newsom as he was showing off an interesting looking first person horror adventure called Shadow Over Isolation. He had me sold at Lovecraft inspired and I was hoping to get the chance to try out the demo there at the convention. Unfortunately due to an injury sustained during the day that they were going to show it off I couldn’t make it. Thankfully, Stuart promised me a copy to try out and critique. Just recently he gave me the link and I took the plunge.
Shadow Over Isolation takes place in a rural farmstead owned by your aunt and uncle, and you decide to take the time to pay your aunt a visit. You see, your uncle had passed away due to mysterious circumstances surrounding the Baphomet Corporation that had been using the farm to conduct research on alternative energy sources or something. At least that’s what the demo’s opening cinematic told me. With a name like Baphomet you know that something has to be amiss.
What I played was essentially a tech demo. Aside from the brief narration at the beginning of the build I had little to work with in piecing together the mystery. There were some minor clues, such as a weird generator going haywire outside the farmhouse and leading to the barn for some weird reason, but little in the way of plot. If anything, what I played was to get a feel for how the final game will play. And I have to say that, some performance issues aside, I had a lot of fun figuring out the major puzzle in the demo.
Now when I mentioned I had some performance issues they were minor. Certainly nothing that tweaking the settings didn’t clear up. I had dropped the graphical quality down to medium to get it to run smoothly but after talking with Stuart I found that just dropping the resolution did the same thing without losing quality. Just take note that if you have a low-to-medium machine you might want to consider lowering things yourself when you play the public demo. More on that in a bit.
Now, Shadow Over Isolation looks to be an interesting take on the horror genre that definitely shows inspiration from the great names of yesteryear in that, at least in the demo, you never see the horror itself but rather are treated to subtle signs that something’s not quite right. Unfortunately, I was not able to finish the build due to it not being finished. I was told that the ending hasn’t been put into place yet which means that I’ll happily give it another go when it goes out to the pubic at large. Which isn’t that long of a wait.
I was told that between now and the public release Patreon backers will get a couple more iterations to critique before going live and even though I have not pledged personally I do hope to be able to see the progress as it’s made towards that milestone. Which I have been told will be going out to everyone on March 17. Which means in a month you, too, can experience the atmospheric awesomeness of Shadow Over Isolation.
