Ayasa: Shadows of Silence Review — What Goes Bump in the Night

Ayasa: Shadows of Silence is a 2.5D narrative platforming game inspired by the likes of Little Nightmares.

Like Little Nightmares, Ayasa: Shadows of Silence follows a story that is dark, scary, esoteric, and carries an underlying message of finding hope in a hopeless situation. While all of these elements certainly found their way into the story, I found the esoteric elements to be more confusing. The story does not do a great job of explaining what is going on or why, and it makes some pretty jarring narrative choices, such as starting the game with a dead elephant in a forest not far from a city that gets literally nuked. Why was there an elephant in the forest? I couldn’t tell you. That specifically really got its hooks in my brain.

The story is weird, but the more I played it the more I started to enjoy the weirdness. Again, not every decision makes sense, but the specific kind of anime horror-inspired look of many of the monsters and the protagonist gives Ayasa: Shadows of Silence a unique identity within its genre, and it is an identity that grows on you over time even if you do not fully understand everything happening at once.

This works especially well when, from what I can tell, the game jumps between different dreamlike realities, exploring different kinds of horrors throughout. The story is not necessarily one you are supposed to understand; rather, it is full of feelings and ideas it conveys to you, and those grew on me more and more as I played.

I will say the most unfortunate and noticeable aspect in Ayasa: Shadows of Silence is the gameplay and the elements in which it does not work so well.

There is a lot of amateurish oversight that leads to Ayasa: Shadows of Silence feeling hollow, unimmersive, and unfinished. It is as if the developers, for whom this is their first published game at least under the company name used on Ayasa: Shadows of Silence‘s Steam page, did not do a pass to correct these problems or did not have the understanding needed to fix them, and left them as they are.

Controls have inconsistent input delays, which can make some of the platforming tricky and uncomfortable to pull off. Falling into a gap or falling prey to one of the monsters can be especially annoying when it happens back to back, because the game has load times that are just long enough to be tedious and just long enough to make you wonder if what the game is loading should actually take that long.

Less important but equally immersion breaking are small issues like monster animations not having recovery or reset frames. If an animation begins and then suddenly ends, such as an attack that the player triggers and then walks away from, the animation stops, and the creature jolts back to its default position. Navigating the levels can be difficult when the game does not lay out the path forward in a naturally discoverable way, such as in games like Little Nightmares. Instead, you often have to ignore what appears to be the obvious way forward and search carefully for how to proceed, something made more difficult when unintentional invisible walls block part of that intended path.

The oddest part of the game, to me, is the lack of music or immersive sound design. It is quiet, with sounds only triggered by enemies or cinematic moments or in the form of crickets and frogs, and other distant background elements. Even then, the mixing is odd, and the sounds will cut out or end in a way similar to the animations mentioned before. It leaves you reminded that you are playing a game and one that needed more time for bug and performance fixes. Only some of these issues are mentioned in this review for the sake of brevity.

As far as the story of Ayasa: Shadows of Silence goes, it is confusing, weird, and dreamlike. It does not tell you everything that is going on, and honestly I think it is stronger for that, even though it took me some time to lock in and appreciate it. It feels like a strange art piece that is designed to feel a little mad, and for that I give it praise.

Mechanically, however, the game lacks a certain expected level of polish for a fully released title. Collision issues plague the game and make it difficult to find the already confusing paths forward. Animations are not fully implemented, the level sometimes loads in late, load times themselves are long, and sounds are poorly implemented in a way that feels bugged every time you hear them. These are only a handful of the problems I experienced while playing.

Ayasa: Shadows of Silence is an artistic game and one that deserves attention. However, I do not think it is up to an acceptable standard of polish, and it could have used a few more months in development spent going over the game with polish and performance improvements. While it is now normalized for games to release in buggy states only to be fixed over time, I do not think it should be accepted, and I recommend that those interested in Ayasa: Shadows of Silence come back to it in six months after it has had time for its developers to fix and improve these problems.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of Ayasa: Shadows of Silence. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Ayasa: Shadows of Silence is available on Steam.