Shadwen is a relatively recent stealth game from Frozenbyte, the developers behind the Trine series, and while I would love to tell you its an astonishingly good sneak-a-thon, the unfortunate truth is that Shadwen is rather unpolished, even for an indie game. However, out of all the complaints I outlined in my review, it was the level design that impacted my enjoyment the most given that each level was a linear series of arenas, and as such incredibly easy to exploit.

Thankfully, it does appear that Frozenbyte has taken these sort of complaints to heart as they have just released 14 completely re-worked levels for free, as well as a whole bunch of bug fixes and improvements to the game's otherwise basic AI. Best of all, the difficulty curve has been increased and a whole bunch of new hidden treasure scattered across the maps, so there is now going to be an actual incentive to go outside the beaten path and explore every nook and cranny.

The 14 newly added levels are re-worked versions of the already existing campaign, though with a twist, you will be playing them in the reverse order! Instead of sneaking into the castle to potentially assassinate the king, you will need to escape down the same path you came through. This might not sound impressive on paper, but with re-worked level design and a completely new perspective, this should breathe a breath of fresh air into Shadwen and hopefully correct the various issues I encountered on my first playthrough.

If you're a fan of stealth games and would like to give Shadwen a try, its currently 50% off on Steam, GOG and Humble for the PC, Mac and Linux platforms. Have fun!