The premise of Ayasa: Shadows of Silence is nothing we haven’t seen before. A puzzle platformer that focuses on taking out various enemies using special abilities. However, there’s something about Ayasa: Shadows of Silence that grabbed my attention. Its sinister environment brings a new sense of eeriness that many horror games attempt to achieve, but slightly miss the mark. We got the opportunity to playtest the Ayasa: Shadows of Silence demo early and immediately, I was able to identify similarities with the Little Nightmares franchise. However, there are problems present in the demo that stop it from shining.
The Inverted World is made up of lands of Faith, Hope, Love, Greed, Indifference, and Betrayal. Sticking to the shadows is the key to hiding away from a range of enemies, while finding remnants of light saves the world from complete collapse. Ayasa is the main character who’s movement lacks fluidity at times. Since Ayasa accompanies you through the entire adventure, having consistency in how she plays is expected.
The demo begins with a cutscene, depicting a city being bombed and non-human entities walking towards the explosion. After a speedy loading screen, you’re thrown straight into the action, immediately being chased by a screaming creature with unusually long arms. Normally, I’d be pleased to dive straight in, but I would’ve preferred some time to get used to the controls, especially since I was using an Xbox controller and the game was giving me PlayStation inputs. The incorrect controls displayed resulted in my death more times than I’d like to admit, but luckily there are regular checkpoints.
As far as demos go, Ayasa: Shadows of Silence does fulfil its purpose of giving players a taste of what the game has to offer in terms of mechanics and enemies. After some climbing, jumping, and pushing objects into position, you’ll likely die to some kind of furry creature that’s hidden out of plain sight. Here, I discovered just how important stealth is, as crouching didn’t alert the creature at all, stopping it from springing to life and hitting me with its unpredictable lunge attacks during a chase.
In fact, you are chased four times in the demo which feels like overkill, especially if you want to get to know the environment, rather than speed through it. Additionally, I encountered a bug where my audio settings would reset back to the maximum values. Considering how loud the game can be, specifically during chases, this was something I wasn’t prepared for. After exiting the extremely basic settings menu used to turn down the audio again, my character lost the ability to jump. From here, all I could do is restart the game in order to regain full control of my character.
When it comes to enemies, five of them will pose different challenges in the demo. Apart from the aforementioned monster with demogorgon-like arms and a boar, there are a bed of giant flowers with lunge attacks that will attempt to stop you from reaching your destination. Then, there’s the non-human entities that seem to be leading the charge when it comes to the destruction of the Inverted World. Later on in the demo, they can be seen carting away humans in a cage through the burning streets of the dilapidated city. Once again, sticking to the shadows is the only way to avoid these foes, as the lightning fast speed they move at feels completely unnatural.
A solid job is done at capturing the feel of the game and the areas you’ll visit. The journey begins at the heart of the chilling woodlands and ends in an abandoned house that has become the home of a huge boss with an evil red eye. Unfortunately, the demo fails to allow players to try out Ayasa’s powers and take on any challenging puzzles, unless one of the puzzles is figuring out where you’re actually supposed to be going.
Perhaps the biggest issues I experienced with Ayasa: Shadows of Silence is the amount of bugs I encountered. Yes, it is just a demo, but there were many instances where I found myself falling through the map and unable to progress without reloading the game multiple times and trying again. Moreover, there are framerate issues, only allowing me to hit around 20fps, even on the ‘low’ graphics settings.
It’s fair to say that Ayasa: Shadows of Silence in its current state is underbaked. If the team over at Aya Games remain committed to polishing the experience, the mashup of ideas in Ayasa: Shadows of Silence could result in something special.
Ayasa: Shadows of Silence will be released in 2025, a specific date has yet to be confirmed. Try the demo out for yourself now on Steam.
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