Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom
Fur is murder
Developer Enigami publisher Focus HomE intEractivE price $ 29.99 AvAilAble At stEam shiness-game.com
Sometimes you have to wonder if game Western game development studios that make Japanese style RPGs are all headed up by furries. Nearly all of them feature at least one, if not more muscular cat or wolf people that brood and are, at least to one of the other characters, more than a little dreamy. Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom doesn’t shy away from anthropomorphic animal characters in the slightest, with multiple cat people, and a fox boy with his chubby bear man sidekick. So can a French indie development studio successfully make a Japanese style action RPG? Yes, yes it can. Well, mostly anyway.
There’s some pretty deep lore behind Shiness. Mahera, the world on which the game takes place has been chattered into a loose-knit field of floating islands by a cataclysm. Chado (pronounced Shadow) is a fox-like Waki, and the pilot of an airship. Along with his fat friend Poky (another Waki but more like a bear than a fox), Chado crashes on one of the floating islands and becomes embroiled in political intrigue and quite a few punch-ups.
There are two things that really separate Shiness from many other action RPGs on the market, but these differences really add up to make the game a quite memorable experience. The first is the fact that, aside from a few bounty style missions, everything in Shiness is based around the central story so there is little that takes you off the critical path. While this may sound a little limiting, there is still ample room for exploration, but the absence of side quests makes everything feel vital to the game. The other differing factor is the simple but clever combat
there’s ample exploration, but the absence of side quests makes everything feel vital to the game
system that utilises a mix of real-time attacks and colour coding.
When a character enters combat they and the enemy are enclosed in a coloured arena that cycles between red, blue, green and the like. Each of these colours corresponds to an element, making that element more dominant when the arena is of the corresponding colour. For example, a red arena is keyed to fire – fire attacks will do more damage and water attacks will do less. Likewise enemies attuned to a colour will be more dangerous in arenas of said colour, so it’s advisable to go on the defensive until the colour of the arena changes to something that weakens them, or at least brings them back to the baseline.
Combat itself is a pretty simple four button beat-‘em-up with blocking and dodging supplemented with magic. It’s a pretty straightforward and entertaining combat system that remains compelling throughout the game thanks to new styles and techniques becoming available through levelling.
The one thing that gets in the way of Shiness being great is a pretty huge hurdle. The camera is awful, and for a game with a lot of verticality and jumping, as well as arena combat, having a camera that often seems to decide that the best view of an arena or area is through the arse of an enemy isn’t what you would call conducive to having a good time. TAVISH FORREST