One of the greatest strengths of Steven Moffat as a writer is taking something relatively mundane and making it absolutely terrifying. One of the most prolific examples would be the Weeping Angels - aliens that resemble stone statues that can only move when they're not being observed and can send people back through time with a touch, feeding on their remaining years. Another one, arguably more terrifying, is the Vashta Nerada. While they, themselves, are not shadows they can exist within any shadow. While they largely feed off of roadkill or the like, they have been know to consume a human or two every now and then.
As the Doctor himself once said, not everyone comes back out of the dark...
So, naturally, it seems like a horror-themed game built around them would be a truly terrifying thing, right? Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.
Shadows of the Vashta Nerada picks up right where TARDIS from last week ended, with the Doctor and Amy landing in London during the 23rd century after the Great Flood...and being attacked by a massive shark. In the cold open they manage to escape it, but the corridor they came down is destroyed and thus cuts them off from the TARDIS.
...which wouldn't be a problem if the Doctor kept that Stattenheim remote he had in his second incarnation, but whatever.
They wander through the corridors, the Doctor giving Amy a little (history? Future? Future history, let's go with that) future history lesson about the place before we discover the first of the puzzles that will torment us and, shock of shocks, it's actually something new! A very Simon Says-esque keypad that, after some jiggery pokery with the sonic screwdriver, forces the player to click a specific sequence of numbers in order to open a door.
Simple enough, though pretty tense when you've got the Mega Shark breaking through the glass tubing of the corridors to come and eat you.
Oh and, as you'd expect, the number of numbers needed in each sequence increase. Have fun!
But navigating through the corridors eventually rewards us with more of the story, namely running into one of the crew of the seabase telling the Doctor about "the sickness" that has taken everyone on the base, and the base's computer - Jones - won't open the doors because of a quarantine. So the Doctor plays around with its logic circuits and eventually gets it to agree to unlock the doors...but not open them.
Inside, however, they find some survivors and backstory, backstory, backstory, and its not just the illness attacking the crew, its Vashta Nerada, demonstrated in true "Silence in the Library" fashion when the lights go out and then one of the crew is literally stripped to the bone. Apparently, the Vashta Nerada, the illness and the Mega Shark all started two days ago with a giant flash in the ocean.
With the lights going out, the Doctor resolves to get the generator back on, and we partake in another mini-game through the corridors where he uses the sonic and the player must time two rotating circles of green light to match up with a third inner circle in order to temporarily turn on the lights so he and Amy aren't eaten.
But anyway, this is a review - not a walkthrough - and the rest of the game is pretty much what you'd expect from a story with the Vashta Nerada. An enclosed space, hapless humans there to be picked off like so many apples on the low-hanging fruit tree. The game does add in some new puzzles, namely the keypad and the rotation circles to open doors and turn on lights.
And while it does do some of the old - more wire puzzles and more sneaking around through corridors that are set up suspiciously similarly to those in Blood of the Cybermen - the dev team did at least admittedly take some pains to add some new things into the mix.
Nothing more to say than this: Remember, kids, don't eat the sea pumpkins.
And it's fitting that Shadows is the last game before October, since it will be our lead in to Horror Month! Stay tuned!
Doctor Who: Shadows of the Vashta Nerada is now available from BBC and BBC Wales Interactive.
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