Shadow of Loot Box is a first person shooter with minor puzzle aspects. You play as ,well, yourself playing a game. It’s a parody game about current gaming trends based on current mobile games I believe. The whole purpose is simply to beat the game, there’s no overarching story or… any story really. This is just a mindless shooter get from the start of the level to the end of the level, sometimes they have some really simple puzzles but no brain required.
The game starts you off walking unarmed, you can’t even jump, eventually you get to level up to be able to run job, interact with things, open stuff, etc. I thought it was funny personally. They later add a survival mechanic with heat and food requirements to stay alive for a level, another has a shitty DRM on it that disconnects and makes you wait while it reconnects again, others let you ‘watch videos’ or ‘mine bitcoins’ and shit for in game money. One level even has you go through it immediately by accessing the key to warp out of the level because it was cut out to be sold as DLC later, another is a buggy mess full on with graphical glitches, T-posing, even the bug that has you see just the eyes and mouth of a character but not the rest of the head. It made me laugh.
Beyond that it’s mechanics are all based on pick up block, set block down, and move around shooting things with one of four guns, a pistol that has infinite ammo, a shotgun, an assault rifle, and a rocket launcher. You get ammo for the latter three, through loot boxes which you collect around the game. When you open these loot boxes it gives you 3 items; they have the chance to give you ammo any of your weapons, health, or experience. You also only get experience from loot boxes or in the case of the first level, through experience blobs.
The game also parodies levels and concepts from other games. For instance the heat and food level was in a snowy area, which reminded me of Rise of the Tomb Raider, another level was in the desert and you could jump off buildings into hay, like that oh what was it you were something like a ninja… oh yeah Assassin’s Creed a super popular franchise. Just seeing things is yes kind of just a jab to the ribs being like ‘yeah we’re cool we know this, you know this too, see we’re cool’ but on the other hand it is sometimes funny.
I felt some of this went past ‘haha that’s so true moments’ that I feel they were trying to hit and went into “that’s fucking annoying’ moments because what they were hitting on the head, they lingered with too long. For instance the DRM thing disconnecting making you wait to play the game, it does it 3 or 4 times in the level. The first time I laughed the second time not so much, after that it was just annoying to have to wait. However, overall I did enjoy the game, it was rather short maybe five or six hours to beat it in complete I think. So that’s not bad for the price point. Now I’m also easily amused so many of these jokes were kinda funny but many of them even for me fell flat but rarely did any of them annoy me, just the DRM one did and one where I hate to wait to get more energy in order to play more of the game which happens in one room, one single time. Those were the only two times I was annoyed every other oddity they threw in was either funny or was just something new to do for a level. I played the game on easy cause there’s no need to play it on hard, I’m a sadist not a masochist. The only time it was difficult was at the start and the last boss. And that was only because I didn’t know what to do at first, after figuring it out the whole game was fairly easy.
Shadow of Loot Box was developed by: Ratalaika Games
Point of Sale: Steam, PS4, X1, Switch
$5.00 on Steam $8.00 on the others
A review copy was provided by the developer Ratalaika Games.
darkmikasonfire has awarded Shadow of Loot Box The Indie Gamer Team Seal of Approval
Indie Gamer Team 