What is real and what is not?
Shadow's Ladder is a fan-made sidescrolling light-horror and puzzle game, created by Andrei "Andrex" Zaitcev and Evgeniy "FuntikX" Chistyakov for the SAGE 2022.
Shadow wakes up on a mysterious island with no memory of how he came to be there. While making his way through locked doors, puzzles and G.U.N. robots, Shadow is soon forced to realize that the way back will lead him down a dark and confusing path.
The game is available for free download on it's designated page
at Sonic Fangames HQ.
Shadow's Ladder contains examples of:
- All Just a Dream: The ending of the game has Shadow wake up in the pod Rouge finds him in in Sonic Heroes, revealing that the previous adventure was really taking place in Shadow's comatose mind. Of course, then there's The Stinger, which turns this into a bit of a Gainax Ending...
- Big Bad: The mysterious Black Hedgehog (no, the other one) who keeps stalking and antagonizing Shadow and seems hell-bent on killing him or at the very least making him suffer.
- Bloodier and Gorier: The game has a fair bit more blood in it than Sonic-games usually do. There's bloody writing on the walls, bloody handprints, puddles of blood around several of the spikes - oh, and the desecrated fresh corpses of Knuckles and Tails just lying around.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: When encountering him the second time, the Black Hedgehog asks Shadow if he's tired of the puzzle-solving and the level design yet.
- Controllable Helplessness:
- The Drowning ending. You can't do anything to get Shadow out of the submerged room. All you can do is wait for the timer to run out.
- After the Black Hedgehog's boss fight, he starts sending clones of himself at Shadow in a barrage that is impossible to dodge, basically beating Shadow down until the next level starts.
- Darker and Edgier: Well it is a Shadow the Hedgehog-game. The atmosphere is dreary and hostile, there's a whole lot more blood, gore and gun violence and if you factor in the ending, there's the additional
Fridge Horror of the whole game potentially being Shadow's Dying Dream. - Multiple Endings:
- Easy Way Out: This ending can be achieved by choosing the 'No' door in the room where the game asks you if you're okay with things getting Bloodier and Gorier from here on out. After exiting through the blue door, Shadow finds himself on a platform with a rowboat drifting in the water. Shadow takes the boat and escapes Teikoe Island with little fanfare.
- Drowning: Shadow enters the mysterious door with the eye-symbol in the Toluca Waterfall area before solving the puzzle. He's trapped in a flooded room, while a disembodied voice complains about pain and tells him that Shadow will stay with it now. The game glitches out, implying that Shadow drowned.
- Awakening: After arriving at the exact place he first woke up, Teikoe Island, Shadow sees a pod standing right in the middle of nowhere. He enters it and the scene shifts. Shadow wakes up in the laboratory Rouge finds him in in Sonic Heroes and exits the pod to protect her from Omega. After Rouge breaks up the fight, the three of them officially form Team Dark to get back at Eggman and leave the laboratory together. The credits roll. In a scene right after, Shadow's lifeless body is seen lying on the bridge in Silent Forest.
- Shout-Out: The entire game is most likely one to the horror movie Jacob's Ladder. The game's title itself is an obvious reference and both the plot of Jacob's Ladder and the plot of the game center around a protagonist traversing a hostile Dark World, being harassed by seemingly malevolent creatures of unknown origins and beginning to question his sanity as a result. Even the true ending of the game is rather similar to the film's ending, with the reveal that the entire game was taking place purely in Shadow's head after the events of Sonic Adventure 2 left him in a coma, Shadow waking up from said coma and leaving the lab he was being kept in together with Rouge and Omega by ascending towards an exit.
- The Stinger:
- After the credits roll in the Awakening ending, a cutscene plays of Shadow lying completely motionless on the bridge in Silent Forest.
- Played for Laughs. After the rather serious stinger described above, Shadow can be heard declaring death to all who get in his way, followed by a gunshot. The player is then shown Shadow standing over Maria's lifeless body and chuckling, before saying "Game Over" and shooting the screen.
- You Wake Up in a Room: Shadow comes to while being submerged under water in a lake on Teikoe Island, with no idea how he got there in the first place.
