I love playing cooperative videogames. It let you test your teamwork and communication skills. Its great way to pass the time with friends and family. Its not very often a co-op game really catches my attention and as online gaming continues to grow local co-op is becoming limited. So when me and my sister played through Shadow Puppeteer over the last couple weeks I was extremely impressed. This is a great, stand-out, co-op experience and developers should be taking notes.
In shadow puppeteer your character becomes aware of a man stealing everyone's shadows. He fails to capture your shadow but he does manage to separate it from your body. Now you and your shadow must help each traverse different obstacles as you chase down the shadow puppeteer.
The first thing you'll notice about Shadow Puppeteer is the asymmetrical game-play. The boy lives in three dimensions where as the shadow lives on a 2D plane. The shadow needs to keep on top of other shadows to keep from falling out of the world. The boy has to help move objects around to help the shadow navigate. The shadow also can help out since he has the ability to reach places the boy can't.
You and your partner really need to cooperate if you want to progress. Both characters share an equal load of the work. This isn't the kind of game where one player can just compensate for the other. There are challenging situations that requires both players to be in sync and they often take several tries to complete. Its feels extremely rewarding when you finally succeed together.
The game is not perfect. The physics are touchy and aren't very predictable. Also the game isn't particularly long. This all being said it was a very fulfilling experience. If you're looking for co-op games for PC and have a couple 360 controllers I highly recommend it. This is what co-op games are all about. I really hope we continue to see more games like it.