Role: Producer, Designer, Sound Designer
Download Prototype: here
“To be a Shadow” is a 2D multiplayer-focused game for PC and Mac. It is a competitive stealth action set in the heart of Japan, where the players will have a chance to compete with each other as ninja warriors of the highest ranked underground Clans of the country. The warriors, even being ninjas, have a limited field of vision, which makes the gameplay of a battle unique and allows to sneak up to your opponent and get a more prestigious kill or disregard the caution and count on your reaction and strength in a noble open fight. You can also find vials with experimental drugs on the arena field that can allow you to temporarily expand your human capabilities: get an Eagle-, 360- or X-Ray-vision.
The idea for “To be a Shadow” came from the concept of limited vision of the characters and the way it can spice up the 2D multiplayer action genre and improve on the stealth element, which everybody on our development team greatly enjoys in games. Gameplay is designed to both be straightforward with clear goals for the player and give players flexibility in their style of play: you can choose to be a silent assassin who crawls up to the opponents and cut their necks with a sword; be strategic and place bomb traps at the right places to lure the enemies right to their deaths; break objects, collect bonus vials falling from them and use expanded vision to get the advantage in the match and kill your victims with a precise shuriken shot; or just give up on hiding and run directly towards another ninja to challenge them in a face-to-face fight (beware, the opponent can sense you when you are running).
To win a match you will need to get 10 points that you get for killing your opponent in a round. The more skillful ways of assassination provide more points and let you win faster. It is, however, entirely up to you to choose the strategy for the match and the types of kills.
While we believe that our prototype is already fun to play, we are planning to expand greatly on the design, add more collectables and playable characters and create the Story Mode that will also introduce players to the universe of the game and the hidden wars of Japanese Ninja Clans.
Arseniy Klishin 