About This Game Shapes of Gray is a stripped-down action-arcade game about rapidly descending through a series of seconds-long levels, each one containing a unique combat-puzzle micro-challenge. Turn your enemies against each other to get the high score and unlock the secrets of a tiny enigmatic world!FeaturingHundreds of randomized levels!Epic boss battles!An unlockable arcade mode with a sky-high skill ceiling!A rad micro-soundtrack by Chicago's indie-punktronic music producer Andrew Nee!High score challenges!Gamepad support!An amazing sense of discovery!Deep hidden meaning!?And so much more! 6d5b4406ea Title: Shapes of GrayGenre: Action, IndieRelease Date: 23 Sep, 2015 Shapes Of Gray Addons The Warioware like format of throwing a bunch of mini challenges at you mixed with the gameplay of what I felt was like a twin stick version of the classic Zelda gameplay made for an awesome and rewarding experience. Also, the amount of unique enemies and enemy layouts in each stage was masterfully done.. Man oh man\u2026 After finally beating the game, I\u2019ll share some of my thoughts about this short, but fun and really challenging game. Shapes of Gray is a fast-paced arcade-style top-down \u201cshooter\u201d, although most of the time you aren\u2019t shooting, but wielding a sword. Your objective is to destroy all the other gray shapes in order to proceed to the next stage. Presentation-wise, this game lives up to its name. The whole game is presented in shades of gray, while the main character and enemies are all gray shapes. The minimalistic aesthetic gives the game a nice retro look, which works fairly well along with the game\u2019s arcade gameplay. The music, while not particularly spectacular, does its job well-enough with the game\u2019s style. What I really want to talk about is its interesting gameplay mechanics. The game\u2019s stages are limited by a very short timer (think WarioWare\u2019s microgames), which forces you to play aggressively. However, you also have a very limited number of lives, which encourages the player to be careful. This system really puts the players in a very stressful situation: confident players will see themselves rapidly losing their precious lives (which do not regenerate between stages) against the various gray-colored enemies; meanwhile, doubtful players will see their runs be ended because they couldn\u2019t defeat all the enemies in time. And this system is the most prominent reason for this game\u2019s difficulty. The game starts off easy enough to get used to the simple mechanics, but by the end of the game, it gets really hard. In order to succeed (especially in later levels), one has to find the balance between aggression and carefulness. And I must say, it\u2019s very hard to find. I was stuck for several days on the last stages of the game because I was either too careless, or too slow. I must admit, it made me very frustrated at times, and it honestly made me angry, not at the game, but at myself. I lost a lot, but it never felt it was the game\u2019s fault, as it doesn\u2019t rely on artificial difficulty or cheap mechanics. The enemies are designed in such a way that the player needs to adapt their playstyle in order to defeat each and every one of them. And they must do so quickly, as the enemies are ruthless and very aggressive. Each stage has a specific set of different enemies, and it is quite interesting discovering how each enemy type interacts with each other. Fighting each different enemy requires different strategies, which get more and more complicated when you are facing different types of enemies at once. Some enemies can destroy other enemies and help you or harm you in the process. Others are immune to the rest of the enemies\u2019 attacks; and others are immune to your attacks. The very high difficulty really punishes the player for small mistakes, which forces the player to perform near flawlessly in each stage. This is a completely personal preference, but I feel this tight margin of error works a bit against the game\u2019s overall enjoyment and fun aspect. I\u2019m not much of a fan of extremely difficult games, as they result more in frustration than fun. However, anyone who\u2019s looking for a challenge, this game\u2019s the solution, without a doubt. The game increases its replay-value by adding an Arcade Mode after finishing the first campaign. This mode adds coins and achievements into the game\u2019s main mode. Players will surely have to try several times in order to obtain all the achievements, as they increase the difficulty of the already hard main campaign.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Now, I\u2019d like to talk about some stuff I feel would make for a much better experience while playing the game. Of course, all of this is just personal preference, and I hope the talented people at Secret Tunnel Entertainment take these bits of advice in consideration for a sequel, an update, or a future game if applicable: -\tIn terms of difficulty and overall enjoyment, I\u2019d say the game would benefit a lot from more health-recovery items. They do not automatically make the game easier, as sometimes attempting to get the extra lives is riskier than ignoring them, but they do allow the player to mend previous small mistakes, and it gives them much more to think about while playing. They rarely appear in the game, though.-\tThe replay-value and overall enjoyment of the game would benefit a lot from a character or weapon selection, letting the player choose at the start of the run according to their playstyle. Maybe a bigger sword that swings slower, or a quick but shorter one. Or a weapon that shoots bullets that take two or three shots to take out each enemy.-\tI don\u2019t ignore the fact that the game has power-ups that change the way the player tackles each challenge, but I felt they were underused, considering they always show up in the same spot and they stay in the player\u2019s possession for a very short period of time. Maybe adding more power-ups and\/or allowing them to appear at random would make for a better experience. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Of course, reviewing this game for what it doesn\u2019t have would be unfair and a huge disservice to what this game actually delivers. Everything listed previously is just feedback for Secret Tunnel Entertainment, and it should not negatively influence your decision to get this game. What this game offers is quite enough for me to consider this game as money well-spent. It satisfied my desire to feel accomplished and challenged, and it got some pleasant surprises and smiles out of me several times. Especially during the ending, which really surprised me in a good way. It was so unexpected and funny it honestly made me chuckle a few times. All in all, I recommend this game if you are mildly interested by it. If you are looking for a challenge and a humble but solid game, you\u2019ve found it.. It's surprisingly tough for such a simple game. It's great if you like fast-paced arcade games.. Shapes of Gray is an excellent short-time game for those looking for a little bit of challenge without the frills of higher priced games. The simplistic nature of Shapes of Gray allows the player to pick up its mechanics in an instant, but when new enemies flood the field the difficulty rises rather quickly. This game was perfect to drop a few bucks on and play on stream, my audience dug it and it just the right length. I definitely recommend you check this game out.. Shapes of Gray is an experience akin to Nintendo's WarioWare series of games, particularly to that series' microgames. Every stage involves you trying to complete a task (in this case, killing every enemy on the screen) within a short amount of time without any sort of direction. Considering that your character and most enemies die in a single hit, learning enemies' weaknesses and how to exploit them without hurting yourself provides an interesting challenge. What sets this challenge apart from the microgames of WarioWare is what happens if you do die. Once you lose your allotted three hearts, you have to continue either from the beginning of the game or from the stage immediately following a boss fight. In either case, the orientation of the stages sometimes changes, which keeps the game feeling fresh even though you are redoing stages you have already completed. Even though I have not completed it at the time of this review, the inclusion of a "second quest" is my favorite part of the game. Rather than simply being a more difficult version of the first quest, it includes entirely new enemies, which means new behaviors and weaknesses to learn and exploit. It's almost like having two games in one, which is great without even taking into consideration the game's affordability. Shapes of Gray isn't the most intense game on the market, but it is one of the most enjoyable I have come across in recent memory, and while I can't guarantee you'll feel the same, I can guarantee that the time spent playing won't feel like a waste.. While I have little playtime on the Steam version, I have a good bit on the Wii U version: I suck at both. Yes, I can get to the final level, but it takes a lot of luck and, generally, cursing. I'm jesting a little bit here because it isn't so much that the game is "difficult" (the levels are the same each time, so it is mostly learning what they do, how to avoid them, and then killing them without killing yourself - THAT is where I fail each time!) so much it is your own idiocy and pride that do you in. For such a short experience it is a lot of fun, and is something that you can rapidly find yourself focused on and trying to improve at. A delightful and fully arcadey experience. For what it is worth, the Steam card art commentary is entertainingly droll.Controller support is perfect, by the way: responsive for the few inputs needed. My deaths are my own fault, as it should be.
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