‘Tandem’ toys with light, shadow, perception
Many games have well-executed cut scenes but bland gameplay. “Tandem: A Tale of Shadows” has the reverse.
Its hasty early cinematics don’t do it any favors, but its exquisitely structured puzzle-platforming levels render them beside the point.
“Tandem” is a fairy-talelike puzzle platformer about a 10-year-old girl and her teddy bear companion who collaborate to explore a strange manor house and its neighboring grounds — areas dotted with traps and puzzles that can only be bypassed through the manipulation of light and shadows.
At the start we are introduced to Emma, a child in 19th-century London. Seated at a table covered with notes and newspapers, Emma immerses herself in a case surrounding the disappearance of Timothy Kane, the young scion of a family of illusionists.
Eager to make headway where the sleuths of Scotland have not, Emma sets out one night to investigate the Kane family mansion. On route to the estate, a horse-drawn carriage passes her and a teddy bear falls from the carriage. Without missing a beat Fenton, the bear, picks himself up and gives chase while Emma falls in step alongside.
Slipping past the gates of the house, Fenton is enveloped in a swirling back mist and disappears, leaving a crystal behind. A crow then sweeps through the air and grabs the crystal, depositing it out of reach on a wall above Emma.
The setup feels rushed, providing only a bare-bones introduction to the characters and their motivations. Yet as soon as control of Emma and Fenton is passed to the player, the game finds its footing. With the click of a trigger button, players can switch between the two, alternating between a colorful top-down angle that focuses on Emma and a black-and white-side-scrolling one that tracks Fenton as he trudges along the walls like a light-filled shadow.
Switching between viewpoints is striking aesthetically and spatially. Aesthetically, in the movement from color to black and white and vice versa, and spatially inasmuch as moving between the viewpoints plays with your depth perception.
As Emma, players must use her lantern to cast shadows — beneath Fenton that he walks on — and to dispel shadows that engulf his body, which prevent him from moving.
In the role of Fenton, players are charged with flicking otherwise impossible-to-reach levers and switches to clear away obstacles that would halt Emma in her tracks. It’s also up to Fenton to retrieve the crystals that mark the end of each level.
As players get farther in the story and new enemies and mechanics are introduced, they’ll be called upon to switch back and forth between Emma and Fenton quickly. During the game’s second chapter, The Boiling Room, I found myself preoccupied with spinning valves to flood and clear tubes of inky liquid so as to arrange Fenton’s path. In its third chapter, The Kitchen, I focused on jumping on timed switches with Fenton so that Emma could slip past fire barriers.
Throughout my playthrough I was surprised by the precision with which I had to position Emma or move objects around to cast just the right shadow for Fenton. In keeping with the theme of a story based on a missing magician, the compact, finely detailed stages unfold like a series of sleight-of-hand tricks that ably draw your focus in one direction so that you are particularly struck when you stumble on a solution that was more or less hiding in plain sight.
If the measure of a good puzzle game is how many “Oh wow, this is crazy” moments are packed in it, then “Tandem” is up there with the best of them. I’d recommend “Tandem: A Tale of Shadows” to anyone who enjoys having their perceptions toyed with.