Slay waves of enemies as you travel from room to room in this auto shooting indie horde survival conquest created by The Fox Knocks. You and your companion (AI or 2 player local co-op) must work together and create builds that complement each other while exploring blanching paths through various zones and worlds in a roguelike setting. You play as two minions who work for a Dark Lord, who tasks you with an ultimate mission. Becoming even stronger and using that power you gain to control and take over worlds. But this will not be an easy task as these worlds come with various different enemies that will stop your mission of world domination in SHADOWKIN!
Gameplay
This roguelike is simple enough to pick up and play. I’m playing this on steam using a keyboard. Because it as auto fire and attacking abilities it’s extremely easy to play, while surviving hordes of enemies ultimately reaching the next wave. Choosing different abilities at the end of a wave will determine progress and your fate. Some of these abilities are ranging from all sorts such as fireballs, boomerangs, to even exploding ice sculptures. There’s a lot of elements from other roguelike games such as Vampire Survivors and especially Hades, one of my all time favourite games in the roguelike genre. Being able to choose different items after an area will allow you to earn extra health, weapon upgrades and many more useful items to help on your path of conquering the different worlds.
You can command where your ally goes using 4 different commands, such as Stop Ally, Follow Player, Chase Nearest, and Chase Furthest. This only works when playing with the A.I. Shadowkin also supports Steam Remote Play so you can jump into the game with anyone on your friends list around the world!
Each run in Shadowkin is unique with each room changing adding new risks and rewards. Acquiring relics will help you progress various ways as you playthrough. These will modify the behaviours of your abilities and such.
In the final areas, such as most roguelike games you will come face to face with a boss of the world. Each boss has a unique style to them, with special moves and abilities that will take all your skills and abilities to defeat them!
Elemental skills are also a huge part of this game that can interact with each other such as storm abilities electrify them and water skills can create puddles used to slow down the enemies. Becoming stronger as you playthrough will give you access to upgrades in the form of a skill tree which you can use to unlock better and stronger upgrades.
Graphics
SHADOWKIN runs smooth and looks great with no slowdown whatsoever, even on lower end PCs the game still runs smooth without any issues. With colourful settings and characters, enemies. A wide range of different stage to explore and take over, this really sets the game off especially for a top/down indie bullet hell adventure.
Audio
Game audio is very chilled with a relaxing soundtrack as you fight through hordes, with hack and slash sound effects. Unfortunately there not much variety between levels but doesn’t dampen the overall experience. When the screen is overloaded with enemies and your slashing everything in site that’s when the audio shines apart from that it’s the same throughout the game. No voice acting.
Accessibility
Accessibility consists of colour options for interactive skill opacity overdrive and enemy brightness. Control accessibility isn’t really a thing here as the characters auto fire and the game is easy to navigate using keyboard or a controller.
Final Thoughts
Shadowkin is an enjoyable little Roguelike with hours of fun to be had. Progressing further into the game does get challenging after the first boss but that what makes you want to come back for more. It’s one of those games were you can spend a hour on and come back to it for a quick fix. All in all I enjoyed my playthrough of Shadowkin and recommend anyone who loves games like Vampire Survivors or Hades such 100% check out this indie bullet hell!
Shadowkin is Available on Steam now!
GAMERHUB RATING: THREE (out of FIVE) JOYSTICKS
(Thank you to Keymailer and The Fox Knocks for providing the code for this review)
