THE KING IN THE SHADES

About this game

A classic late-90s / early 2000s narrative driven survival-horror game, set in a fictional universe full of century old mysteries to uncover.
You play as Douglas Hayles, the one who bears the mark of the king of shades and tasked with an impossible mission that cannot be achieved within a single lifespan.

FEATURES:

• Choose both the combat and puzzle difficulty according to your preferences.
  
• Cinematic fixed camera level design.
  
• Classic tank controls movement system.
  
• Limited supplies and inventory space.
  
• Limited amount of lives per play-through, every decision you make has a cost.
  
• In real-time resource management, preparation before every engagement is key to survival.

Latest news

• Patch Notes·26 Mar 2025Official

  [ver.0.2.5-demo] - Stability update and difficulty balance.

  – 26/03/2025Comment: Hello everyone! Adding the automatic crash reporter in the last patch seems to have already paid off! A user triggered a crash last weekend, and I managed to find a second one yesterday. Getting an automatic detailed report of crashes helped a ton with finding and fixing these issues rapidly! Below is the list of small quality of life and difficulty improvements and crash fixes! New Features: Adjustments: Added an inner monologue text prompt to help players know what to do on the second part of the first level. Added a tutorial for the first time the player fails to pick up an item due to having a full inventory. The default notification icon for when this occurs was not clear enough on its own. Normal combat difficulty rebalance: Removed Flere’s ability to accelerate over time while aware of the player (Flere’s acceleration received a slight reduction on all other combat difficulties.) Normal/Hard combat difficulty rebalance: Removed 1 enemy from the exterior areas of the level. King of Shades combat difficulty rebalance: Reduced Flere’s health to the same level as the nightmare difficulty. Flere in this difficulty already has an extra ability, hits harder, and moves overall faster; the additional health was honestly overkill and took away some of the fun of fighting the enemy (nobody likes bullet sponges :( ). Bug Fixes: Fixed a bug where the inventory screen would not close properly if the player opened the Steam overlay. Crash Fixes: Solved a crash that would occur when changing the “Depth of Field” setting from the main menu. Solved a crash in rare cases where the player interacts with the safe in the study room, dies, and then interacts with it again. Known Issues:
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• Patch Notes·13 Mar 2025Official

  [ver.0.1.2.4b-demo] - hotfix update.

  – 11/03/2025Comment: Hey! :D New Features: Integrated a crash reporter intended to catch any issues players could potentially have while playing the game. Adjustments: Added an inner monologue text prompt at the beginning of the game to let players know what the level objective is. Improved visual signaling on where the player should be heading towards in the introductory section of the game (special thanks to players that suggested this in their feedback!) Added dirt and reduced the quantity of grass patches on the intended path. Elevated the slopes of the landscape to block out the view of non playable areas. Added more grass and shrubs on non playable areas. Bug Fixes: Crash Fixes: Known Issues:
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• Announcements·2 Mar 2025Official

  [ver.0.2.4-demo] - Normal difficulty rebalance and more!

  – 01/03/2025Comment: Hello everyone! :D I hope you been having a blast playing my demo during NextFest, here’s a list of changes that I’ve been working on during this week to address issues that I noticed players were having with the game, most notably the game’s combat difficulty. New Features: 3 extra tutorials added to the game. Tutorials now stay extra time on screen based on their relative size (amount of information), and if the player is active in combat or not. Adjustments: Improved the conditions for the “gun reload” tutorial to appear on screen. The player’s “quick turn” action speed has been increased by 50% It was just marginally better to use “quick turn” rather than manually turning 180 degrees, considering the necessity of having to press an extra input, its use was hardly ever warranted. Now the action should feel much better to use in combat. Normal combat difficulty rebalance: Reduced Flere’s damage per attack by ~30%. Reduced Flere’s total health by 20%. Reduced Flere’s movement speed acceleration by ~15%. Reduced Flere’s sight radius by 10%. Reduced the hearing radius of noises the main character can produce. Increased the chance of landing a critical hit on Flere (pistol headshots.) by ~15%. Increased the default number of handgun bullets per pickup stack from 8 to 10. Reduced the chance for Flere to attempt to dodge an attack by ~5%. Reduced the durability loss of items per action by ~7%. Hard difficulty rebalance: Reduced Flere’s damage per attack by ~10%. Normal puzzle difficulty rebalance: Increased the number of available manual saves. Removed the developer’s hard difficulty recommendation from the description, now it should better reflect player’s expectations of what each difficulty entails. Bug Fixes: Thanks to feedback from Steam players, I fixed an inconsistent issue with the flashlight needing to be turned on so players could interact with objects that are very clearly visible on screen. From now on only objects completely masked in d...
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• Patch Notes·22 Feb 2025Official

  [ver.0.2.1-demo] - NextFest patch, Day/Night cycle and more!

  – 21/02/2025Comment: Hello everyone! To celebrate the game’s participation on the NextFest: February 2025 edition, I’ve been working on putting together a new update that brings to the demo many of the improvements that I’m working on for the game’s next major update. Below are the patch notes! :D New Features: Dynamic day/night cycle: Added moon and stars. The starting time of day will vary based on the combat difficulty the player chooses, the higher the difficulty the closer to night time. The time cycle stops once night time arrives, the sun will never rise (this is a horror game after all.) New sky atmosphere and volumetric clouds system added to the game, the sky clouds are no longer just a texture on a sphere that surrounds the scene, they now exist physically in the 3d space. The sky atmosphere now changes its color based on the current position of the sun and the moon. The clouds don’t add too much to the scene so I currently have them implemented using the bare minimum of system resources possible. New tutorial notification system: Tutorial hints will be displayed as players go through the game, some are triggered by simply progressing but most are triggered based on the most ideal context possible for players to learn the involved mechanics. Example: the tutorial hint for reloading a handgun will only appear when a player depletes a magazine and also has ammo in inventory for a reload. Tutorials always show the inputs based on what is currently mapped for the specific action and the corresponding glyph for the active input being used (keyboard or controller.) Weapons can now also be carried over from one play-through to the next. Added enemy AI mechanics: Rather than sliding on the ground, “Flere” (the demo’s enemy AI) will now turn in place before moving to a new destination. Depending on the combat difficulty: Flere will now accelerate whenever he is damaged. Flere will attempt to dodge gunfire by strafing to the player’s sides whenever he is the primar...
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• Announcements·14 Oct 2024Official

  [ver.0.1.3c-demo] - Normal puzzle difficulty improvements.

  – 14/10/2024Comment: Hello everyone! This new update is mostly aimed to improve the experience of new players with the game, I took in all of the feedback regarding the “normal” puzzle difficulty and came up with a list of improvements that should make the game less overwhelming for newcomer players! New Features: Added 2 new HUD notifications: A blue “diskette” icon will now appear whenever the player is saving the game, this will also occur if the player dies. Whenever the player attempts to pick up a item whilst his inventory is full a red icon will appear to warn the player. Adjustments: Normal puzzle difficulty adjustments: The locked safe puzzle is now a requirement to be solved before moving into the second stage of the level. This will encourage players to better explore the level, previously, the key items needed to progress through the level were getting mixed up with the ones meant to clear the safe puzzle and it was a bit overwhelming for some players. Added “direction markings” to the key item related to solving the safe puzzle. It should help with players figuring out without trail & error in which order the puzzle is meant to be solved. The color of this item has been changed to a new one that is barely present in the first level of the game, this should make the item easier to find. New key item added. Improved the “Photograph” clue item to better help players solve the related puzzle. The inventory icon for the handgun has been updated to reflect the improved 3d model from a couple patches ago. The concentrated stamina solution (ri_s2) no longer replenishes the max stamina pool of the player in addition to the player speed bonus. Bug Fixes: Crash Fixes: Known Issues:
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