Kickstarter Shout-out: Twin Souls: The Path of Shadows

These days, you can’t get a certain genre without it blending together with another genre. We have action platformers, first-person shooter RPGs, and you get what I am saying. Well, I found a Kickstarter game that is pretty much a stealth game. It is a game called Twin Souls: The Path of Shadows. Let us jump into the shadows and see what this game is all about.



You play as a vengeful spirit named Aragami. He was summoned by a female of mysterious origins named Yamiko, who has been imprisoned in a fortress that is heavily guarded. Due to being summoned by her, both of your souls are bounded by destiny as you must traverse across the land to break the seals that imprison her. This seems like an interesting setup that has some potential, but we will have to see if the story as a whole is filled with complex themes of destiny, identity, and other motifs that you could fit into this story and make sense.



Twin Souls: The Path of Shadows is a stealth/action game in the vein of game series like Tenchu. You must hide in the shadows to get to your goal, while sneaking past or killing anyone that gets in your way. One of the more interesting gimmicks in this game is the fact that you have an array of powers that involve controlling shadows, which leads to a multitude of abilities, from using the shadows to teleport yourself to higher areas, to getting rid of the bodies of the slain guards. You will also have different masks that you can equip, that will give you different benefits, like improving your skills in assassinating the patrolling guards. The Kickstarter page promises that the levels will be designed to whatever play style fits you as a gamer. This means that you can sneak past everyone through the shadows, take down the archers before taking out the guards on the ground, or even cause fear within them to start killing each other. The game will not have an option to go all Ninja Gaiden on the enemies, due to the fact that the developer wants you to get that tense feeling when you have been spotted and must retreat into the shadows and start again, once they lose sight of you. They also add in the little detail that the enemies can manipulate the light to try to force you out of the darkness. So far, everything that this Kickstarter promises is intriguing. The game is offering a stealth experience that gives the player a rather generous amount of freedom in how you tackle the levels that are put in front of you.



One of my favorite aspects of this Kickstarter game are the graphics. They are done in a cartoony style that reminds me of shows like “Avatar: The Last Airbender” or the PlayStation 2 game, Rise of Kasai. The music is said to be inspired by games like Journey and Dark Souls. This will mean that the game has a rather atmospheric soundtrack for your ninja to hear while playing through each level. The main theme of the game that can be heard on their Kickstarter page is beautiful. It’s soft, but has an epic quality at the halfway point of the song. The music for this game is being composed by a studio called Two Feathers. They have done work for games like Battlefield Heroes, Hammerwatch, and a lot of music for titles from Rovio, the company behind the popular Angry Birds franchise. Overall, the graphical presentation and music are top-notch from what I have seen.



Do I have some concerns about this Kickstarter? I do have maybe one or two concerns with this title. The first one is that I hope the enemies that you encounter do not act like robots, where they have a preset path of where they walk and how they act. It would lower the immersion level if all you had to do was know where each of the guards or other enemies will walk. It just seems archaic, in the sense that these days we can make AI not stay on a predetermined path and can walk and go anywhere the level will let them.



In the end, this is one of my favorite Kickstarters to find out about. I love everything from the graphics to the gameplay. So far, it will only be on PC, but they have recently confirmed that if they reach funding, they will be able to put the game on current gen consoles. It hasn’t reached its funding yet, and I hope that changes, because I would love to play this game on my PC or a console of choice. The stealth genre has gone by the wayside, since stealth gaming has been mixed in with action and platforming elements, so it’s gratifying to see a developer focus on one kind of genre and stick with it.

(If you want to support this Kickstarter, please go to this link!)