Nightshade Reviews

I think if you are a fan of retro games this is well worth a try. How many games have you seen that are combination of a point and click adventure and a beat em up. The music and art style alone have real charm. However I do wish the developers had added a few new features, like perhaps an improved control scheme and save options, although given the cheap price I am more than prepared to overlook that.

I have been a fan of this game long before Stop Skeletons from Fighting (oh how the mighty have fallen) reviewed it in 2008 when the owner Derek Alexander went by the "Happy Video Game Nerd". He gave it such positive praise and I was so relieved to see this game finally getting more recognition! And it deserved it too! It's one of the most underrated adventure games of all time. I always have just as much fun playing this as I would playing a point and click game by Lucasarts or Sierra. And at the low price you can get it for, you shouldn't pass it up. Now, why are there no achievements available for it on here?

great game, I played this game a long time ago and i'm so happy to know its on steam! I'm a bit rusty tho :)

This was my favorite game in childhood. I would play other NES games (Tecmo Bowl, Mario, TMNT, etc..), but I always came back to Nightshade. Back before strategy guides were easy to find, I worked my way through this game wishing I could explore more of its quaint world. I wish that the game had a sequel (as it was a "Part 1"), but that never happened. Hopefully that will change in time because the game has a charm that was way ahead of its time. The only downsides in the '90s were the clunky controls and lack of a save function, but with the Steam release both of the problems are things of the past! I love this game, and I hope that this release on Steam paves the way for a remake and potential next chapter. I'll even throw my hat in the ring to lead the effort. This game is wonderful. Please give it a try and enjoy!

One of the greatest tragedies of our timeline is how we never got the follow-up episodes for this game. Real review: ---------- In it's time, this game wasn't well received because of the controls. While the number of interactions available can be a bit clunky when emulating an old NES controller, you can and do get used to controlling Nightshade. This is an easy recommend for anyone into old NES (hidden) gems, quirky point-and-clicks, and comic books. It's a game with tremendous personality, great atmosphere, and enough variety to keep you interested. Some of the puzzles are, as usual for this genre, a bit out there. Because this is an emulated port of the NES romset, the wrapper has 3 save-states available. Use them often. (I've only got 12 minutes playtime on steam, but I still own my original cart.)

A hidden gem of an NES game. Nightshade is an adventure game, emulated from the NES. It is not perfect, for one the hotkey to load save states doesn't seem to work. It's a more basic version of the emulator overall. But it's functional. Besides, you can take the ROM from the game data and use it in any other emulator if you wished. For the game itself? There's a lot of clever bits in it. "Game Overs", for the first four time, are not actually game over screens. You can escape the death traps. As an adventure game, most of what you have to do is understandable. There are a few points that don't make a lot of sense, but overall the game's not difficult to figure out. There are combat sections as well, and those are let down slightly by the game not being that responsive. Sometimes you'll have inputs dropped which can make you take some excess damage. And healing is limited in the game. Limited, but there ARE ways to defeat everything, usually you can figure out patterns that let you take minimal damage. So there's enough healing to go around. Once you start figuring the game out, everything fits nicely into place. I played with save states to try to mitigate damage from combat and while trying various things, but it's also a game that's gated by knowledge. So knowing what to do will help speed you through early parts of the game if you have to start over. I do recommend this game. More people should check it out. And I'm glad that someone's decided to preserve some NES games and make them accessible again, legally.

Like a lot of folks, Nightshade (by Beam Software) was one of the best adventure games I’d ever played. Written by Paul Kidd and scored by Marshall Parker (who also did Shadowrun on Super Nintendo), the game’s design somehow makes point-and-click function smoothly on NES and blends pugilism and puzzles so perfectly that it’s more Batman than Batman! The gorgeous graphics go a long way to evoking the gothic caped crusader plot. When I found that Piko had resurrected Sutekh from his sarcophagus and put this on the Steam store, I was ecstatic! Nightshade (like Shadowrun) always felt like a PC game that had been adopted by console parents and deserved a reunion with its Lucasfilm and Sierra cousins! After four hours of play, my enthusiasm was curbed. I guess I was hoping for something…extra? Mouse support? Speed adjustments x2 x3? In truth, the publisher has literally just tossed up the original game in an emulator. I suppose this wouldn’t bother me so much, but the emulator itself is subpar. There are almost zero options to configure the game: no widescreen, few interface options, and maybe it was just me, but the hotkey to load a state did not work, forcing me to escape full screen and do it manually. That’s not the kind of mouse support I was hoping for… Suffice to say, I am giving Nightshade a thumbs-up (it’s a must play game) and Piko a thumbs-down. If nothing else, it’s nice to own a legal copy of the game I loved from my childhood.

I squealed in delight when I saw that this game was added to Steam. It's a severely underrated gem on the NES library that beautifully combines the point & click and action/adventure genres together along with also having the best writing out of any NES game. I highly encourage you to buy this gem of a game right away!

I didn't believe my eyes when i saw this was on here... I love this game so much! The soundtrack is super good, the puzzles are fun, and so is the combat. This game is so good.

This was an instant buy for me. I had fond memories of playing Nightshade on the NES. The emulator is decent, it has save state support. The full screen also has a wallpaper behind it. It is cheaper than buying Nightshade NES cart on eBay.