Over the years many a video game has caught the eye through a unique graphical style. Cuphead provided old school shooter thrills with a nod to classic animation, and proved so successful that a Cuphead TV show is on the way, while the Ralph Bakshi-esque design of The Banner Saga proved a perfect fit for its powerful fantasy story. Standing out visually is a great way to gain interest, and Towaga: Among Shadows certainly looks the part.
Developed by Sunnyside Games, Towaga initially saw life as a mobile release before expanding onto other platforms. It's fair to say that Sunnyside has nailed down how Towaga should look, with fantastic character models and some truly gorgeous, flowing animation. With plenty of color and a sharp contrast to its shadowy enemies, Towaga feels reminiscent of games such as Rayman or PS1 cult classic Heart of Darkness, while comparisons to Samurai Jack also ring true.
Because of this art style the player is immediately sucked into Towaga, and the game uses this interest to create an evocative game world. Although finite details of the plot and setting are not laid out immediately to the player - a wise decision given how action-centric Towaga is - further information can be found through codex entries and items that are unlocked over the course of the game. In short, though, bad monsters have appeared, stolen people's souls, and must be shot with a big magical laser until they go away.
At a surface level Towaga therefore works extremely well. Unfortunately, the game starts to struggle as soon as the player turns towards the actual gameplay of the title. Towaga is fairly repetitive in nature, split between two core modes of play where the user is either stuck in a single, grounded location or flying around a small, square map, with the objective of both modes to simply survive waves of enemies.
Because of this, Towaga essentially boils down to an old arcade shooter with its core play. When static in one location it's Defender with a supernatural bent, while the slightly more free flying sections are more akin to Sinistar. It's this limitation that truly showcases the game's mobile roots, without the fluidity that games on other devices are generally able to provide.
That's not to say that using those classic titles as a template is a poor approach; after all, historic games can still prove successful and can be refreshed for a modern audience such as with Tetris 99. However, Towaga does not do much to build upon the arcade titles of yore, beyond giving them an admittedly excellent fresh coat of paint and a few additional features that contemporary gamers would come to expect.
One of the most successful of these is the game's varied enemy types. Although there's nothing very original, Towaga's mixture of flying and running grunts are backed up by exploding bombers, powerful but slow beasts, and a variety of casters that can fire back with different projectiles. Essentially, it feels as though Left 4 Dead's special infected were added to a twin stick shooter.
Towaga also has a selection of boss battles that break up the monotony of its normal stages. These provide more difficulty through impenetrable shields or unique attacks, providing a different challenge and less of a war of attrition as the player gets to learn their patterns and act more strategically.
These positives aren't quite enough to make Towaga an engaging experience, though, particularly in the tiresome second act that restricts the player's well-earned power ups. Meanwhile the game does have some technical issues, such as the occasional problem of enemies not despawning when killed, which can make it confusing with so much happening on screen at any given moment.
Although Towaga certainly has some genuinely impressive qualities, particularly when it comes to its stunning visuals, there is not enough here to strongly recommend it to players. The game may be pretty to look at, but unfortunately it's a little too basic to make the translation over to PC or console gaming effectively.
Towaga: Among Shadows is out now for iOS devices and Nintendo Switch, and releases 14 July 2020 for PC. Screen Rant was provided with a PC download code for the purposes of this review.