White Shadows

What if INSIDE was a noir movie?

Why

Why Not

Impressions

This is my first INSIDE-like after enjoying that game and its predecessor LIMBO quite a lot earlier this year. You're a helpless little raven girl in a big scary noir-style world which hates birds, only able to walk, jump and climb ladders.

While INSIDE puts the pressure on right out of the gate by having first a car, then some dogs chase you, White Shadows is pretty much just a walking simulator. There's some mild platforming but it's very forgiving, and you're not in any real danger until around Act 3. By contrast LIMBO brutally murdered me ~10 times in the first 10 minutes, which definitely helped establish the sense of fear and helplessness it was going for.

The world of White Shadows seems like it should be dangerous and opressive, but playing through it doesn't feel that way at all since you're so rarely in any real danger. It's mostly a walking simulator, and I'm not sure the world/story are quite interesting enough to sustain that over even a 2 hour runtime. Maybe they were going for more of a class warfare type of vibe rather than outright horror, with some very on-the-nose references to the hierarchy of animals populating this steampunk-ish city. There's some amount of story going on, with a ringing phone often leading to a reprieve from dangerous situations, as well as some mind-bending, open to interpretation happenings at the conclusion as is tradition.

Overall I found it decently entertaining; once I got to Act 2 I was drawn in enough to keep playing until I finished. They used light (as expected) and cinematic camera angles to great effect, even giving me a cinematic framerate on my Steam Deck despite this looking like something it should run easily. If you can pick it up on a big sale go for it and enjoy the ~2 hours of exploring this weird, visually impressive world, but don't expect it to have the kind of impact LIMBO or INSIDE did.