Cyber Shadow is an action platformer about Shadow, a cybernetic ninja who is the sole survivor of his clan after the evil Dr. Progen and his robotic army tried to take over the world.
As you guide Shadow through the world torn asunder from the damages done to Mekacity during the attack, you will find the means to become a more powerful ninja in the process. Some of your clanmates have been captured and can be rescued to gain special abilities.
You’ll be slashing and jumping a lot in your pursuit to take down the hordes of enemies that litter the city, but these special abilities make your job much easier.
Attacks like a ninja star or a fire attack that shoots three fireballs upwards require spirit energy to use, but they can make hitting switches or hard-to-reach enemies a breeze to dispense of.
I will lay it out for you now, however: Cyber Shadow is a downright challenging game. It’s meant to be a throwback to the old NES games that share the same style and “just one more game” type of difficulty.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some changes made to modernize the game, as there is no “game over” screen; you just respawn back to the last checkpoint you saved at.
Since this is a Yacht Club Games published title, you’ll also be happy to find it shares a lot of its feel from their other highly successful title, Shovel Knight. Secrets abound everywhere, and there are some that can only be accessed if you warp back to a previous area of the game.
Some of Shadow’s abilities, such as health and your spirit meter, can be upgraded by items you find off the beaten path. You’ll upgrade some permanent abilities by completing ability tests, like being able to slide on walls, which itself opens up your movement capabilities tremendously.
Your spirit meter, which is used to supply energy to your special abilities, drains after each special attack. You must defeat enemies or attack crates or other destructible items to fill it back up. There is a trick, however: if you find enough of the gold coins on your adventures, you can activate additional options at certain checkpoints that will refill your spirit meter every time you return or perhaps drop a specific weapon for you to use.
Weapons found in the game stay with you until you’re hit a number of times, and then they break, but these weapons can really make fighting baddies an easier task. You’ll typically find them around areas where they are utilized the most, like a large, spinning ninja star that rotates around your body and swing in the direction you last moved is found near a bunch of hard-to-reach flying bots.
Bosses are the bread and butter of the Shovel Knight series, and they are certainly the focus here, as well. Each boss has its own attack pattern that requires reading tells to figure out what it’s going to do next, and most have an alternate form that will keep you on your toes. They make dredging through waves of enemies worth it, as fighting and defeating these masterfully-designed bosses is extremely satisfying.
The graphics style in Cyber Shadow is the traditional 8-bit pixel design found in classic NES games but with a bunch more colors and effects. It’s a gorgeous form of simplicity that both establishes a base design but adds enough detail so that you never have to question what you’re looking at. This, paired with the amazingly spot-on chiptunes tracks composed by Enrique Martin and produced by Jake Kaufman, adds even more to the action-packed feel of the game.
You might be sweating bullets at the end of each level, but the satisfaction of the journey makes it all worth it. Cyber Shadow is not only a nod to the past but a perfect example of what made these types of games so alluring from gaming’s history. It’s an absolute joy to play and a worthy game for you to pick up for your platform of choice and hone your ninja skills.
Cyber Shadow is available now for Nintendo Switch, Playstation, PC, and Xbox (included on Game Pass).