Having always seen indie games as an essential building block of the gaming industry, I take particular interest in solo dev projects. This week I’ve been fortunate enough to check out the latest title from The Fox Knocks. Embrace your inner furry and come with me as I dive into ‘Shadowkin’ which launches on Steam on February 24th.

You will play as not one but two lowly minions in service to the dark lord, tasked with becoming stronger and conquering worlds. If you are expecting an epic story, don’t because this just isn’t one of those games. In this auto-shooting, rogue-like, bullet-hell, the gameplay alone will have you itching for more. Players will be facing off against increasing waves of enemies as they travel from room to room. Beat enough rooms, survive the onslaught, and lay waste to the world boss to complete a conquest. One of the things I love most about rogue-likes is that no two runs are the same. Even after many failed attempts it still manages to remain fresh and challenging.

Controlling two characters at once was initially a little daunting, despite it simplicity. Getting the most out of your AI-controlled player is the trickiest part. You can issue a few commands that have your companion follow, stop, chase the nearest enemies, and chase the farthest enemies. When you go down, you will take control of your companion. Surviving the room has revived at the cost of some health. Often I would start my companion off chasing the farthest enemies, and when overwhelmed, I would have them follow. Sometimes I’d even use them as bait and plant them in place to take the brunt as they don’t take damage.

Learning to synergise your build to get the most out of your character and companion will take time to get right. When starting your conquest you will select one base skill for each character, this will serve as the building blocks of your build. Upon choice of a skill, you’ll also notice that it comes with a cost. Selecting the fire element, for example, you will no longer be offered skills with the nature element when leveling up. When reaching your next level, you’ll be offered a selection of skills for each character to help them grow and become more powerful. You can reroll these selections but it does have limited use, you are also able to choose to banish a skill from returning to the choice pool.

Enemies occasionally drop coins, which you can spend between certain areas at one of two merchants. The dark lord merchant will offer some in-game perks that will help to aid your conquest. Often needing to dodge out of the way of the horde, I would happily buy extra dashes and a coffee to reduce stamina regeneration time. The healer merchant offers much-needed healing items, increasing max health and recovering lost health. Sometimes you might find yourself desperate for health and will need to sacrifice those hard-earned coins. For the first hour or two, I struggled to have enough coins to buy the good items. This had me thinking that perhaps there weren’t anywhere near enough resource drops. Upon a glance at the skill tree, everything started to make a bit more sense.

Defeating a certain amount of enemies will net you a skill point to invest in the skill tree. Offering up a tonne of game-changing, permanent perks such as increased max-health, more coins, increased crit-hit chance and even adding more elite enemies to the area. While the skill tree is certainly a game changer it’s not without some issues. The biggest flaw of the skill tree is that you can only navigate it with your mouse.

For controller players, this is straight-up egregious. Also, if you are running a high DPI like I do on your mouse if you hold down the left click to drag the skill tree around, it will bug out and you’ll find yourself in the middle of nowhere. Hopefully, future updates can resolve these issues.

I don’t mind the gritty pixel-art style it’s very well suited to the experience and implemented well. Sadly, it is let down by a few shader issues that make certain things seem washed out and make them blend into the background. In some areas, the dark lord merchant looked like a black hole. The elemental attack effects portray your ever-growing power well. Some storm skill effects can tend to obscure your vision and can be annoying.

The listening experience was quite a surprise. I did not expect to be so impressed. The constant barrage of attack sounds combined with visual effects blend perfectly. The background music does a fantastic job of bringing together all of the highs and lows of battle. It is a well-rounded audio experience and fits perfectly with the dark theme.

Despite the few issues that I’ve had, ‘Shadowkin’ is a solid entry into the auto-shooting, rogue-like genre. There are plenty of different builds to experiment with and tonnes of replayability. I see a lot of potential to become one of my go-to survival games. Before I go, I’d like to thank ‘The Fox Knocks’ Discord community. Thank you for being amazing, helping me sort out any issues, and answering my call to arms. ‘Shadowkin’ is available on Steam on February 24th. Embrace the furry, pick up a copy and serve the dark lord in all his glory!

Written by: Gary Nielsen