9 Years of Shadows

Fight to bring beautiful colors back to a hand-crafted world of darkness and discover the story of Europa, a young warrior, and her ghostly childhood companion, Apino.

9 Years of Shadows is a action, adventure and metroidvania game developed by Halberd Studios and published by indie.io.
Released on March 27th 2023 is available only on Windows in 8 languages: English, Spanish - Latin America, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian and Simplified Chinese.

It has received 2,351 reviews of which 1,806 were positive and 545 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.4 out of 10. 😊

The game is currently priced at 18.49€ on Steam.

The Steam community has classified 9 Years of Shadows into these genres:

Action Adventure Metroidvania Pixel Graphics Action-Adventure Platformer Side Scroller Exploration 2D Female Protagonist Atmospheric Indie Story Rich Fantasy Singleplayer Lore-Rich Magic Anime Souls-like

Media & Screenshots

Get an in-depth look at 9 Years of Shadows through various videos and screenshots.

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Requirements

These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.

Windows

Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 10
Processor: Intel Core i3-9100F
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: GT 730

Reviews

Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.

Dec. 2024

The Hi-Res Pixel Art Scenes and the Character Portraits are a treat to explore throughout the game and carry the intrigue of the story throughout the play through. This game has simple mechanics and is great for a light solo game session as it is pretty forgiving in most enemy encounters. you will see why with its unique health bar mechanic. However there is the odd highly creative boss or three that you will face, which will challenge you to use the mechanics more competently. The look and feel of the particle effects with the rumble as you slash through enemies is quite satisfying as well, like popping bubble wrap if I'm honest. As far as things I didn't like about the game, it really boils down to not having enough "things" that allow you to express "player skill" such as more moves or a point system but that's not what this game is trying to sell you. It sells you on the story which is pretty satisfying to playthrough, however I wish I could have learned more about the characters I came across in the story. A lot of the boss villains with dialogue have fleeting backstories that you'd want to know more about or are visually striking enough to want to explore more of that character but you fight them once and that's the end of them. my only real criticism of the game is that there isn't more of it to play which is not necessarily a bad thing in my eyes. All in all I would recommend everyone play this game whether you're seasoned or casual.

Nov. 2024

For me, Ori is an S+, Hollow Knight is A+, so this is a SOLID B+. The art and cut scene animations are great, each characters portrait is really incredible and unique, the difficulty is moderate till the final boss where it jumps up quite a bit though still not super spicy, music stands out mainly in the theater and armor upgrade rooms, and movement is fluid and predictable. Improvements for me would be in diversity of enemies, more instances in bosses that utilize different armors/switching armors, clarity in armor interactions with enemies (colorblind folks be struggling), and more fleshed out/memorable music for entire areas. Overall a fun and enjoyable experience

Nov. 2024

The game is good, it's an indie Metroidvania. The health system is a bit weird but you get used to it. You start with only 2 health, and mostly rely on a shield. The caveat is that shield refills as you hit and kill enemies. In addition when your shield is fully depleted you can charge it to about 90% in a few secs. This can be done in battle but requires timing. The level design and music are good quality. The only thing I didn't like was that the dash is backwards like some vampire style games. A directional dash would have been more fluid. There are a few particular enemies where this gets annoying and ends up making you get hit when you meant to dash away. Overall worth playing and supporting.

Sept. 2024

It's a short but fun metroidvania game. My only complaints are: 1. Combat is simple. I wish there was more depth. 2. There are a lot of color-swap enemy types. 3. Final boss is such a huge difficulty spike compared to the other bosses.

April 2024

So like.... I'm torn. I picked this up after backing this studio's new game to see what their first game was like, and it definitely feels like a first game. Let's start out this way - I would recommend this game. It's a fun game, the music is really good, the art style is cool, the character portraits look good, the combat is overall fun, the different armor is neat, the traversal is enjoyable, and some of the bosses are a blast. If you like Metroidvanias, you'll like this! ...IF If you can deal with the whole 'first game' aspect. Bosses are fun... except some have awkwardly long runs back if you die, and unskippable too-long intros. Bosses are fun... except when you just have back luck and they chain strings of their most annoying attacks, and it stops being about fighting the boss and just repeating the same jumping pattern until they calm down. The music is really good... and you'll hear the same tracks a LOT. Traversal is enjoyable... but there's not really a good fast travel system, so the game feels padded out by the traversal. The different armor is neat... but ultimately kinda same-y. Each one gives you a different traversal skill, but doesn't really change combat in anyway other than matching colors up with enemies. By the end, I was honestly kinda hitting a wall. Instead of scouring the map for the last couple items I missed, I just went to the end boss and banged my head against some of the things I mentioned before (Thankfully that one has a short run time) But lemme be clear - there's AWESOME stuff in this game too. Some of the boss fights are absolutely fantastic, and the controls are tight enough to make you feel like a lot of close wins are super earned. I really liked the overall look and sound and feel of this game, it just got a little long in the tooth trying to cram in a bunch of extra boss fights without making the core of a Metroidvania--going back and forth across the same map--more engaging. Still pick it up if you love Metroidvanis though!

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