Cynthia Hidden In the Moonshadow Review

Cynthia Hidden in The Moonshadow is a small indie sport from builders Catthia Video games. The sport is greatest described as a comfy, light-hearted, stealth-focused jaunt throughout a stylised world. The sport performs closely in the direction of the narrative aspect with some participating exploration that’s held again by its very linear world design.

Whereas out exploring and coaching removed from residence, Moonshadow Huntress, Cynthia Strandborg, eagerly awaits her return journey, particularly to see her boyfriend. However whereas she’s out, the Monks of The North, wielding darkish magic, have attacked her residence, kidnapped her boyfriend and turned everybody else to stone. It’s as much as Cynthia to seek out two artefacts that can assist her cease the Monks and save her family members, her boyfriend particularly.

Whereas Cynthia wields a bow powered by the artefacts, and possesses quite a lot of strikes corresponding to climbing, sliding, dodging and three totally different arrow sorts, fight nearly by no means occurs apart from a number of enemy sorts and the video games final sequence. Cynthia Hidden Within the Moonshadow is, as an alternative, extra fascinated with stealth journey, which does tie-in extra intently with Cynthia’s standing as a Hunter.

Stealth itself shouldn’t be an advanced affair. Tying in with the comfortable nature of the sport, a quite simple stealth system is employed, centered on hiding in lengthy grass, crouching behind obstacles and avoiding the enemy’s sight, which may go from flippantly alarmed to attacking you. Which you don’t need as there’s a one-hit system in place. When you do get caught and whammied into stone by the monks magic assaults, a fast reload will pop you again to your final auto-saved level and away you go. There’s no actual penalty for loss of life, past some loading and a lesson in been extra cautious.

It’s additionally one of many areas that doesn’t fairly make sense as Cynthia can use her arrows to distract guards, drop crates onto them, blind their view or confuse them into attacking one another. Exterior of the video games final boss combat, and a really particular roaming vitality ball enemy, you possibly can’t use your bow to kill enemies by means of the remainder of the sport, which makes that remaining sequence really feel misplaced.

Including to that feeling are a few of Cynthia’s strikes. The dodge feels pointless as there isn’t any cause to make use of it since you don’t actually get into fight. And the identical goes for her slide transfer, which does look actually cool however is just used to slip below rocks. Whereas the slide has a handful of makes use of, the dodge I used solely as soon as through the tutorial part.

With Cynthia Hidden Within the Moonshadow been reasonably brief – you possibly can end it in a single sitting – and the move-sets that by no means get absolutely used or fleshed out as if the builders forgot to take them under consideration as improvement progressed, Cynthia Hidden Within the Moonshadow finally ends up feeling extra like a prologue or proof of idea than a full journey. There’s nothing improper with brief video games, in truth they’re a sight for sore eyes in an age the place most video games are pushing to take over your entire free time, Cynthia Hidden Within the Moonshadow ends simply because it begins, with a attainable promise of extra to come back.

If you’re not enjoying as Snake-lite, you’ll be exploring the reasonably linear ranges in the hunt for Guardian statues to activate, diaries entries to learn which add lore onto the world, gentle puzzles to resolve, outfits to gather and arrows to craft. I used to be by no means positive what precisely the blessing from the statues did, although discovering the lore entries added some a lot wanted meat to the video games narrative bones.

The puzzles, which ranged from flipping levers in particular orders to stepping on tiles in particular patterns had been simple to resolve and broke up the stealth pacing. The crafting can be saved small and easy with a handful of things to choose up which are used to craft your three arrow sorts. With the quantity of supplies on provide, operating out of ammo is rarely a priority.

Visually, Cynthia Hidden in The Moonshadow is an interesting and vibrant sport. The stylised look, which we should always all be used to by now, offers the sport some nice environmental moments however the environments are let down by their simplicity and relative vacancy. The grass, water and character fashions are splendidly achieved however the lack of props and muddle within the surroundings makes the sport appear naked.

Which makes the truth that it suffers from body drops, whether or not I performed on Xbox One or Collection X, a little bit of a priority. It doesn’t have an effect on the motion however could be very noticeable throughout exploration.

The sport suffers from a sequence of points in animation – such because the sluggish and awkward climbing, design and measurement that clearly exhibits its smaller price range, indie standing. There’s an fascinating proof of idea, design fashion to the sport that’s simply begging for a bigger price range and sequel that, hopefully, Catthia Video games can fulfil on.