Blink To The Past: Path Of Shadows

Path of Shadows is an upcoming non-commercial student project in which the player character can teleport between shadows. As seen in the prototype video below, it resembles an over-the-shoulder Mark of the Ninja, with a protagonist who is wearing a magical glyph version of Isaac Clarke's RIG read-out. Limiting the teleportation ability to shadowy areas suggests prescribed paths through levels, a puzzler's approach to stealth. As is often the case, the sneaky protagonist feels compelled to creep through temples, silently murdering guards. A goddess instructs, "do not bother remembering anything", which sounds exactly like the sort of thing that somebody would say if they'd killed you and taken command of your soul in the recent past so they could make you smash up a rival deity's temple.

I only spotted Path of Shadows because all-round man of adventure, novelist and Dishonored creative designer Harvey Smith retweeted a mention of it this morning. The implementation of the teleportation power, as he mentioned, could be very different to Corvo's Blink, more 'designer dictated' and less capable of opening up the world's architecture to the player. A very different experience then but now that I've been reminded of Dishonored, I feel compelled to harp on about it for a brief moment.

It's one of the rare games that becomes more impressive as time passes and that's not only because of the excellent DLC that has added to Dunwall's allure. The range of powers at Corvo's disposal, with Blink at their heart, created a highly kinetic form of stealth game that owed almost as much to Mirror's Edge as to Thief. It's also, despite the lack of capes and comic book licenses, one of the best superhero games of recent times, along with Saints Row IV.