Tabletop Tales: ‘The Shadow Project’
Something you quickly realize about Cutters Guild products is that they are all very clearly inspired by popular mainstream works, specifically popular games of the time. The mascot of Deathstalkers 2, which is fought in What Lurks Beyond, is a large armored black knight called a Juggernaut, which heavily resembles a Chaos Warrior from Warhammer, the popular tabletop wargame. The Shadow Project seems inspired by quite a lot of media while proving to be fairly original in its own right.
This game, like many indie RPGs, is a custom ruleset with its own niche setting. This game is based on the fictional man-made island New Prometheus, a 3000 square mile large floating city-state off the coast of New England. Much like other islands off the coast of Eastern America, the entire island has entered a state of emergency. In this case, it’s due to a rogue computer virus so powerful it has hacked into the human genome and discovered the secrets of perfect biomechanical parasitism, enslaving the populous as cyber zombies and threatening to take over the entire world if so much as a single bit of corrupted data escapes the island. Thankfully the book later mentions that somehow the Shadow Project constructed a gigantic containment wall around the infected downtown sector (I suspect wizards were involved), which is where the majority of the game is suggested to take place
The intro takes this concept and immediately poses a scenario that if true, the world has already been conquered, and there is no further reason to play the game. It follows a combat journalist on his deployment to New Prometheus to help recon the city and figure out just what’s going on. The team is killed near immediately by the techno-zombies, robo-vampires, and other deadly creatures of the city, leaving the infected journalist to wander off on his own. He eventually find a computer terminal, which the virus naturally threatens him with; it’s suggested that the man kills himself soon after. What is not mentioned however, is the fate of the anti-viral Archangel chip in his camera, which he did not botherto destroy after the evil virus pretty much demanded the damn thing. It’s implied that if the virus got its hands on this camera, it would completely nullify the single edge humanity had left against the DEVIL virus.
At the end of this story, the journalist also decides to mention that in addition, an Archangel chip that the player characters use is nearly ready, which indeed makes me wonder why they sent a recon team with the well known repercussions of rendering their secret weapon completely useless. The opening of this book is flawed; the players would get to the scene and immediately become infected since the virus has by then figured out how to defeat its one predator. This part of the setting drives me nuts, not only is the setting so generic but it flat out denies its own possible existence with just a small bit of logic.
The books art is the other thing that irritates me; for the life of it, the games artists cannot decide what any of The Shadow Project’s soldiers or the monsters themselves look like.
Many illustrations depict the cyber-undead as decomposing bodies with metal graphed bits, while the bestiary pages suggest they are built completely of sinew-like cybernetic tubing with maws of gnarly teeth. Other pages picture Shadow Project soldiers in infantry combat armor while other agents are decked out in the same sinew-armor the undead appear to wear. It’s like the art of two very different games but with the same enemies and ideas behind them.
Shadow Project soldiers are tasked with defeating the virus, and are outfitted with Archangel chips that limit the exposure of the DEVIL virus and allow the operatives to hack and utilize the virus for themselves. This is not only extremely dangerous but the main way characters gain power and weaken their enemies. Various weapons the agents are equipped with hack the data within the enemy which can then be applied to the agent’s body, mind, or soul. Yes, as in there is actually a readout on the wrist of every Shadow Project soldier that says body, mind, and soul, and their survival hinges on their ability to shoot monsters and apply it to their SOUL. The fact that this mechanic is in no way actually a meta-concept yet commonly accepted in the game world helps completely undermine any horror the DEVIL virus may have had. If the Hindu philosophers ever saw this book, I think India would declare war on us.
With the great power and reward that comes with the virus there is also great risk. Every time you reach certain levels there is a chance that the DEVIL virus will assume direct control and kill you, as is what normally happens when you plug a virus that shares the name of the dark one into your neural net. Yet Shadow Project is completely fine with their agents doing this, to the aforementioned point of labelling their equipment for inputs of this data to their body, mind, and soul. I can’t get over how weird it is for a horror game to be so laughably flawed in its setting.
Every monster in the game is named after traditional fantasy monsters, with various ghosts, wraiths, werewolves, and vampires around. The art for them all is of the sinew variety, and thus once you see one you generally have seen them all. Large humanoid figures with big round eyes, gnashing teeth, and a PHD in kicking your ass. Many of them are designed to be serious threats, as they are created by the DEVIL virus for various functions and purposes. Why however the DEVIL virus named them the way they did, the world may never know.
This game is for collectors only, and I don’t suggest actually trying to play it. The book itself is a large softcover book, ships in great condition, and while the artwork flips between two different settings, it’s also rather in-depth and quite pretty. The story of this game is a black hole devoid of any actual plausibility, to the point of being insulting. I don’t question the DEVIL virus at all, in fact that’s the most brutal virus possible. What I object to is how there is no possible way with the current setting that the game should be playable. It sounds like the DEVIL can simply fall into the ocean, grab a fish and suddenly the world is fucked. Also, how is a 20 foot tall wall supposed to stop the DEVIL minions when they almost all can climb buildings effortlessly? There is no possible way to actually quarantine the island! Everything we know about the DEVIL virus just points out more and more that there is nothing we as humanity can do. Not since the reporter basically gave our secret weapon to it!
This is a horror game that manages to fail at every quality of being a horror game. The monsters are simply not frightening, the game technically has already been lost, there is a meter for soul on the military’s armor, and on and on. It’s too easy to analyze the game and see exactly what it is doing wrong, and thus draw little entertainment from it.
-Necroscourge 3/1/13
