Hooray! It’s almost Halloween and it’s time for a swarm of horror games to hit the market. We’ve had some solid horror titles the past couple months, with In Sound Mind and Tormented Souls being some highlights. On the other hand, we’ve also had Damn Dolls, which can only be described as… special. Time to check out Shadow Corridor, a Japanese horror game originally launched back on Steam in 2019, which has just made its way to Switch, courtesy of NIS America. Will Shadow Corridor be a trick or a treat? 

There’s not much story in Shadow Corridor. You get some vague flavour text at the beginning of each chapter, which does nothing more than hint your next objective. Like the name suggests, Shadow Corridor has you exploring a lot of dark corridors. This is very much a stealth horror game with roaming threats around the map that will give chase if they spot you. It’s a basic premise that we’ve seen plenty of times before, but its execution misses the mark, often falling into tedium rather than tense and exciting scares. However, with the dynamic nature of a roaming threat, there are moments where Shadow Corridor shows some potential. 

Most of the time though, Shadow Corridor is a dull and honestly frustrating experience that can’t quite hit its potential. The movement speed in this game is painfully slow. You can sprint, but this only lasts for a few seconds, taking ages for your stamina to recover. It doesn’t really seem to help much when trying to get away, since the ghosts seem to move faster than you anyway. If you do get caught, you can hide in baskets or rooms off the main corridors until they return to their normal patrol pattern. Much of the game is structured around finding X item to unlock the exit. Whilst not bad in theory, it just doesn’t do much to mix things up. 

Along the way you can pick up a variety of items, such as light stones that help guide your way back through the maze like structures, to cameras, firecrackers, and mirrors. Each item has a distinctive, and frankly helpful, use. You’ve also got the game’s difficulty and checkpoints, both of which are inconsistent, with some harsh checkpoint placements. If you’re playing one of the larger maze-like areas then you will need to use a resource to resurrect and continue with progress made. You could lose a good chunk of progress if you forget to do so, so if you stop playing make sure the game is just backgrounded. It’s actually a shame I don’t like Shadow Corridor because there are times when it’s genuinely atmospheric and tense, especially in its earlier sections. 

Shadow Corridor is not a good looking game, but it also doesn’t need to be. The environments are passable enough, immersing you into the experience with some solid lighting effects that look just okay on the standard Switch screen. Sadly, low resolution textures and some horrible shimmering effects, courtesy of the lack of a proper anti-aliasing, make for really unpolished visuals that I found distracting. For this alone, I’d recommend playing it exclusively in portable mode, where its visuals are still noticeable, but not bloated up onto a huge screen. The locations themselves are just uninspired and incredibly repetitive, with every corridor looking almost identical. As for the enemies themselves, all I’ll say is they look hilarious when chasing you, just sliding around with the animation not matching their movement speed. 

I’ve always said that sound design is one of the most important aspect of a horror game, as failing that can ruin the whole experience. Thankfully, this is one area that Shadow Corridor actually lands. During much of the time whilst exploring the environments, you are left alone, with no sound at all. As you get closer to an enemy, your character’s heartbeat will pound and chimes will begin to be played. It’s actually a wonderful effect that really starts to bring the game up just a little bit. When you do get spotted, the music kicks in, as you are chased around the map desperately searching for a hiding spot or the exit. It’s not the best of sound designs, and many other horror games do it better, but there’s a solid effort here. 

For a budget horror title, Shadow Corridor isn’t as bad as I expected, but it certainly isn’t a good game. The core gameplay loop of searching for items through a variety of dull environments whilst avoiding enemies gets old stupidly quickly, especially when you add the tons of frustrations this game throws onto you into the mix. This horror title is better left ignored. 

 

Graphics: 5.5 Low resolution textures and dull environments lead for an underwhelming visual experience.	Gameplay: 4.0 Very basic gameplay that doesn’t do anything interesting.
Sound: 7.0 Whilst the sound design doesn’t really do anything special, it does exactly what it was supposed to do. The best aspect in Shadow Corridor, by a mile.	Fun Factor: 4.0 Some intense moments don’t make up for such a dull and very repetitive gameplay loop.
Final Verdict: 4.5

Shadow Corridor is available now on PC, PS4, and Switch.

Reviewed on Switch.

A copy of Shadow Corridor was provided by the publisher.