$22.99Shadows Over Loathing Eldritch Comedy in Black and White
Search a prohibition-era city for your missing uncle, cracking jokes, solving puzzles and fighting tentacled horrors along the way.
Is Shadows Over Loathing worth it?
Shadows Over Loathing is worth it if…
- you like comedy that never lets up, from puns and sight gags to outright nonsense
- you want an RPG where talking your way through a quest is a real option
- you enjoy puzzles with several solutions and stories that branch
- you have a soft spot for stick figures, black-and-white art and 1920s slang
- you liked West of Loathing and want more of that world, with tentacles
Screenshots
A world drawn in ink and bad decisions
Everything here is hand-drawn line art in black and white, stick figures wandering a 1920s city of mobsters, speakeasies and things that squirm in from beyond the edges of the screen. The plain look is the joke and the charm: a horror that would be grim in full colour turns deadpan when the monster is four lines and a frown. The writing carries it, with thousands of gags, authentically baffling period slang, sentient math and talking frogs. You can pet the cats. The music is a highlight too, orchestral and moody, sometimes layered so you can walk between street musicians and hear the instruments blend as you pass.
Choose a class, then choose everything else
You start by picking a class: stuff enemies into a phone booth as the athletic Pig Skinner, bend dairy-based cosmic forces as the Cheese Wizard, or follow your own inscrutable purposes as the Jazz Agent. Stats like Muscle, Mysticality and Moxie shape what you can do, and your build opens different ways through the story. Several quests can be solved without a single fight if your character is suited to it, and some builds let you talk your way past enemies entirely. Choices matter, there are multiple endings, and a time-travel side quest handed to you by your own future self is exactly as sensible as it sounds.
Mysteries worth poking at
The whole plot starts as one: Uncle Murray asked for help at his antique shop, and when you arrive he is simply gone. Finding out why means digging into the cursed antiques he collected, and the shadowy plots wrapped around them. The game rewards a careful, thoughtful approach: puzzles often have more than one solution, and many scenarios hide outcomes you only reach by reading the situation instead of hitting it. Some puzzles lean on trial and error, and a few will send you looking at a guide, but the good ones are clever enough to be worth the head-scratching. The Lovecraftian side stays tense without ever turning grim.
What should you know before playing?
Is the combat required?
No. Fights are turn-based and you can engage with them as much or as little as you like: many quests have non-combat solutions, and the right build lets you avoid or defuse encounters. When you do fight, expect a few minutes per battle. One honest trade-off: combat can drag late in the game, when enemies take a lot of punishment and battles settle into the same routine. Come for the writing and the world more than the fighting.
Do you need to play West of Loathing first?
No. It is a follow-up set in the same universe, so fans will catch extra references, but the story stands on its own and new characters carry it. If you have never touched the series, this works as a starting point, and the character building here is simpler than in the previous game, which makes it an easier one.
How long does a playthrough take?
Longer than you might expect from the simple art. There is a sprawling open world with a main story plus a large pile of side quests, and the game is roughly twice the length of its predecessor. With multiple endings and choices that quietly lock away whole chunks of content, a second run plays out differently, so completionists have plenty to chew on.
