Shadowhand - Review @ Eurogamer

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Eurogamer has reviewed Shadowhand:

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Shadowhand review

Deal and deliver.

Blending solitaire with role-playing, combat and a racy, buccaneering plot, Shadowhand is a delight - and a true British eccentric. - RECOMMENDED

Grey Alien Games is the definition of an outsider game developer. A husband-and-wife team based in rural Dorset, Jake Birkett and Helen Carmichael work alone with support from tiny publishers and overseas contractors. Jake isn't a refugee from AAA development, but a veteran of the unfashionable PC casual gaming scene of the last decade, when he churned out cheerful puzzle games for sites like Big Fish. They are also history nuts. Helen, who writes the scenarios, is a historian, while Jake collects coins. When making a game set in historical times, Jake likes to keep a coin from the period on his desk to turn over in his hand while he works. If you had to place them as characters in a contemporary sitcom, it would be The Detectorists, not Silicon Valley.
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Some modern RPG players, weaned on predictable outcomes, might baulk at this, but I love how Shadowhand uses a solitaire hand to fill in for the cruelty and caprice of the dice roll in old-school role-playing. Sometimes things just don't go your way. Besides, the hands are quick to run through and can always be replayed. Shadowhand is never frustrating and always a joy to play; like Regency Solitaire, it has been polished to a sumptuous, walnut glow. The hand-painted artwork is a bit gauche, perhaps, but has a certain Hogarthian charm, and the audio is simply fabulous. Atmospheric ambient sound does as much as the backdrops to bring the scene to life, there's a rollicking score, and crisp arcade-style sound effects - pushed right to the front of the mix, where they belong - make the action of clicking on playing cards almost viscerally thrilling.

Perhaps the best thing about Shadowhand is that it doesn't come from the same place as other video games. Literally so, because who else is making games amid the rolling dales of Dorset? Who else is looking to bodice-ripping historical novels for inspiration? And who else is salvaging the design and aesthetic values of an unloved branch of the video game family tree - the already archaic, almost forgotten world of pre-smartphone casual gaming - and grafting them onto other genres to create something strange and new? This is a great game and a true original. Savour the work of the outsider, because it's rarer than you think.