This is a historic edition of Backlog Busting. Not only is it going to be the shortest one thus far, but it’s also the only one in which I decided to abandon a game while I wasn’t even playing it.
Up to this point, there have been a few backlog games I abandoned instead of finishing. The one thing they all have in common is that I was actively playing them when I chose that I no longer wanted to continue. I played Atlas Fallen for at least 10 hours before I got too bored to continue. I made it just over halfway through Area 51 before I decided that it didn’t have much more to offer. And I got 2/3 of the way into Dark Void before I just couldn’t take it anymore.
Shady Part of Me? I wasn’t even playing when I decided I had enough. I barely made it through Act 1.
Maybe the problem started when I couldn’t even remember when it ended up on my backlog. That should have been the first clue that I should just play something else. They added it to GamePass, and I immediately recognized it as something I had meant to play. I don’t remember the when, or why of it. All I knew was I saw it in the recently added section and went, “oh it’s that game, I’ll finally play it now."
If you’ve read any of these columns by now, you see where this is going. I did not finally play it. I waited a few more months, and I finally decided to play it just for this column. I mean, it’s a backlog column, so what better excuse to finally play a backlog game?
Okay, Some Shade
I first booted this game up at about 11:30 at night. Maybe not the best idea but not the first time I’ve done so for a backlog game I was going to write about. I played through the tutorial, and it was decent enough. It’s a 2D platformer where you and the environment you must navigate are a shadow on the wall. It was simple but solid. It’s a tutorial, so I could forgive the simplicity, and the art style was striking and beautiful.
This tutorial section also showcased how I thought the story would be told. As you go through it, there are words that appear in the foreground that help to convey the emotions the little girl is feeling. It was a simple but effective way to communicate the narrative of what this little shadow was going through. There’s even a nice mechanic where, when you obtain one of the collectible origami figures, new, more positive words of encouragement pop up to counter-balance the other words, which are mostly negative.
I was looking forward to a 2D platformer where you play as the shadow of a little depressed girl and work your way through whatever trauma she went through.
Then I finished the tutorial and was met with this.
Look, it’s not their fault, but dark-haired little girls with their hair completely covering their faces are creepy. Sure, in real life, sometimes they just can’t help it, but this is a video game. The developers intentionally did this. They designed her this way. After decades of this kind of character design being synonymous with the word “creepy”, they still did it. Maybe it’s part of the commentary on mental health, but there had to have been a better way; they already had the shadows.
Not only does she look like that, but she also talks in a creepy high-pitched British accent that I can only describe as the Shining twins on helium.
So right away, I’m a little turned off, but I play a little more. I made it through the first 2 sections of Chapter 1. What the tutorial made me think would be a decent 2D platformer is instead a puzzle platformer where you switch between 2D and 3D.
The 2D sections have you play as the girl’s shadow, and the 3D sections have you play as the girl doing The Ring cosplay. It sounds interesting, and maybe it does eventually get interesting, but all I did was do a really simple 2D platforming section as the shadow, then switch to the girl to move some objects to create new shadow platforms. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. It was fine, I saved and went to bed.
The next day, I woke up with the intention of playing some more at some point. At the last minute,e I decided to play something else instead and get back to Shady Part of Me the next day. Then, much like the gameplay loop I just described, that sequence of events was rinsed and repeated for 6 days in a row.
On the 7th day, I booted up my Xbox, scrolled over to Shady Part of Me, and decided I just didn’t want to play it again. And that was that. Is it a bad game? I don’t know, I didn’t play it enough. I don’t think so, but it certainly isn’t an interesting one. Or maybe it is, and it gets better and better, but that’s just not something I’ll ever figure out. I played it and just had no desire to continue.
The other Backlog Busting games I abandoned, I was in the middle of playing them when I decided I didn’t want to anymore. This is the first one that I just couldn’t bring myself to even start up again. I just didn’t want to play it again after that first session.
Shady Part of Me exists, it’s a game, it’s technically sound, it has a decent concept, it’s well put together, but it just isn’t interesting. It exists as part of a lineage of indie games like it, many of which I really enjoy, but this just isn’t it. I don’t know how else to put it. It’s just not it.