Puzzle games have a long history in gaming, but they’ve become increasingly common today as indie devs find more outlets and improved graphic and control possibilities mean more options. Tandem: A Tale of Shadows may encapsulate this notion the best, thanks to its charmingly gothic aesthetic and a memorably simple yet challenging control notion.
CBR was provided an opportunity to play an early build of Tandem, in which players control Emma and her teddy bear, Fenton, as they search the mysterious Kane family mansion for the missing Thomas Kane. However, the mansion is a twisting labyrinth of puzzles and horrors, requiring Emma and Fenton to navigate its bizarre layout in a stunning adventure across two dimensions.
Right off the bat, players will notice the game’s art style — a macabre, Burton-esque world with a Victorian aesthetic. The game is gorgeous, with the character designs being particularly stunning. Fenton and Emma’s are designed with unique silhouettes that differentiate them in cutscenes and gameplay, and those designs tell you everything you need to know about their personalities. The mansion itself is full of exaggerated architecture, including massive gates, floating platforms and the occasional giant spider with a homing cone.
Essentially, Tandem boils down to two planes of gameplay, each with different objectives. Fenton moves closest to the player in a pure 2D perspective, where he can navigate platforms and interact with objects such as buttons and bells to assist Emma. Notably, he can also stand on shadows cast by light sources in the world, such as Emma’s lantern. This opens up the primary aspect of Emma’s gameplay.
With lantern in hand (save for a few levels where she is stripped of it), Emma must manipulate the lights and platforms in the various rooms to create a clear path for Fenton to reach, but the shadows can trap Fenton if she doesn’t line up the path correctly while placing it where he can’t reach the next goal can result in a grisly fall into spikes. Emma’s gameplay occurs in a top-down perspective, with her gameplay mixed between arranging platforms, adjusting lights and avoiding a few enemies. The goal is for Emma to open the path so that Fenton can reach a shard which Emma uses to progress to the next stage.
The two-plane playstyle does work well enough, though sometimes it isn’t perfect. Emma is woefully slow, even when holding down the run button. Fenton’s movement is fine, but sometimes his jump arc was much shorter than it actually felt. The result was several deaths because Emma couldn’t outrun a spider or because Fenton fell like…well, like a stuffed teddy bear. Still, these never felt like the game’s fault, and the game was very clear with its rules and world. Still, it’s a unique take on the tried-and-true puzzle method of having players explore worlds that are two sides of the same coin. Mixing the planes never feels jarring or uncomfortable, and the controls are simple and straightforward. It does feel like the developer, Monochrome Parts, may be missing a trick by not offering some type of multiplayer or co-op mode, but the game still works beautifully as a single-player experience.
The gameplay doesn’t pan out in traditional levels; rather, each “level” is a series of single rooms with puzzles that must be navigated to escape. The result is a series of puzzles that feel like a throwback to old PC puzzle games. Each room contains a simple, easily identifiable puzzle — from using shadows to create ramps for Fenton to having Emma move boxes to get past spiders — rather than just being a lengthy platforming challenge. The result is a game with a real pick-up-and-play mentality, allowing you to experience the game in short, bite-sized chunks. Tandem is the perfect game for playing in between tasks or just on a short ride, but the challenging puzzles, gorgeous art and creepy tone managed to keep us engrossed for the long run.
Indeed, it’s the tone of the game that sets it apart. The dramatized Victorian stylings make the world instantly appealing and inherently creepy. The boss fight of the first stage is highly effective: a giant, deformed clown jack in the box head slithering through the mansion. With no other path to the shard, Fenton must run across the jack-in-the-box’s back, avoiding spikes and waiting for Emma to complete the gaps in the path with shadows, all while she avoids spiders lurking in the background. It’s never terrifying, but it is definitely unsettling.
The puzzles themselves, though, are where the game’s strengths lie. They’re never terribly difficult, at least not in the early levels we were able to play. However, that turned out to be something of a detriment, as we often overthought puzzles, only discovering an obvious path that had been overlooked after some time banging our head against the wall. There’s no real threat of death, fortunately. Checkpoints are generous, and being impaled by a spike or tackled by a spider just results in resetting to the previous checkpoint. The result is a puzzle experience that will keep you on your toes, but rarely will you become so frustrated that you put the game down. Tandem is designed to keep your interest so you don’t stop playing.
Ultimately, Tandem: A Tale of Shadows surprised us. The experience proved incredibly enjoyable thanks to an engaging art style and some genuinely fun puzzles. We were only able to play the first two levels during our time with the game, but that proved to be more than enough to get hooked on the game. You, too, can get hooked on Tandem: A Tale of Shadows when it releases October 21 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC. A free demo is currently available on Steam.
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