Towaga: Among Shadows Review – Action and Tower Defense With Quality Art and Music, but There Are Issues, Too!

Towaga: Among Shadows was delisted from the Steam Store a few months ago. It was advertised as being an action, tower defense, and shooter game. With so many genres being mentioned, it makes a bunch of claims! But playing it now, are those statements justified?

Gameplay

To its credit, Towaga: Among Shadows is a pretty distinctive game when it comes to art design and music. However, we’ll get to those aspects soon. Starting with the gameplay, your goal is to cleanse temples by destroying hordes of enemies with the beams of light that come out of your hands. To attack, you simply move the right analogue stick to point your beam at your foes. This is done in three types of stages around each of the temples. You first travel to the area and defeat the monsters as they charge at you from the right and left sides of the screen. Surprisingly, these early sections just have you standing there; you cannot move and the only way to defend yourself is by attacking. There’s no parrying or dodging. After a few rounds, you approach the temple. In this second set of stages, you still can’t move, but your enemies are coming from all directions instead. Again, after defeating some additional levels, your character changes form and can fly around in the sky above the temple. This third type of stage introduce a couple of new gameplay mechanics. Flying around in the air is done by moving the left analogue stick while still firing your attacks with the right. You can also dash while in the air, which is unique to these types of stages. Just before you’re about to clear the temple, you’ll likely face a boss as well.

All the while you’ll be earning shards so you can upgrade your character with a stronger attack, a wider beam, and so on. These funds are easy to acquire upon first defeating a level, but once you reach a point where you have to grind, the number you receive drops precipitously. Along the way, new objects will also be unlocked. Some explain more of the background story or lore to the world. For instance, one may be a memory that shows a brief animated sequence from the past, an old journal entry that are a few paragraphs in length, or a new special attack may be given for your character to use. These latter skills are selected prior to the start of the level and are utilized by pressing the left trigger button.

Learning how to tackle different kinds of enemies is satisfying. Knowing which ones are the most dangerous at any one time is a big part of the game. Focusing on the wrong foe may result in an early defeat in a stage. This is important to mention because sometimes your loss is due to poor strategy. Other times, under leveled attributes for your character could be the culprit. Did you notice that in the previous paragraph I said that the number of shards received drops a lot once you are replaying stages? That’s a big deal because you may get to the point where you can only survive a stage for 10 seconds, earning you a measly 6 or 7 shards for your efforts. Meanwhile, your next upgrade may require 300 shards or more. Welcome to frustrating Grinding Land! The game isn’t really too much fun at this point and can be rather draining. In my playthrough, I had 2-3 places where this happened and there was only 1 thing I could do to make it bearable. I had to start over on story mode all the way to level 1! Doing so allowed me to keep all my upgrades and unlocks, and re-earn additional shards for completing “new” stages. By the time I reached the battle that was causing me trouble again, I’d usually be able to defeat it easily.

So be aware that if you don’t like grinding in your games, you may want to avoid this game. Moreover, know that when you break down the gameplay, much of it involves moving the right analogue stick toward enemies quickly, and pressing the left trigger to use your special magic effectively. In the context of gameplay, there’s not much more to it than that. The reason being that it was designed to be played on mobile phones.

Art Design and Music

Not that the game is without merit, far from it! In regard to its graphics, Towaga’s distinctive art style is a big part of its appeal. Especially since all the enemies are hand drawn and the animations are well done. Moreover, your light attacks have some real neat effects associated with them, both visually and with the sound effects. I especially like’s the game’s lighting when your attacks hit the enemies. There’s a good weight behind them that makes them enjoyable to use. Concerning music, it is often quite rich and expressive with a wide variety of instruments backing up the action. I didn’t turn off the music during my whole playthrough. The only issue that I had with the audio was that after a while the constant screams and moans from your enemies becomes nauseating.

Dialog and Menu Issues

Another couple of areas that were a bit irritating were related to language and menu systems. Some of the dialog in between levels seemed stilted and confusing. I wasn’t always sure what the characters were trying to convey. What made it worse was the game’s menu system. When choosing different attacks, Towaga would tell me to hit L1 to use a special attack. I interpreted that to be the left shoulder button. Yet, it was actually the left trigger button that I was supposed to use. Finally, as the game progressed, you could unlock practice levels. When selecting them, the image you see on the screen does not represent what you may have chosen. You can have an image of your character in a flying level, but when you start the stage, it is actually you on the ground at the top of the temple instead. It took me days of playing to find out that changing a menu box on the screen chooses the practice level type, while the image being displayed has nothing to do with what is picked.

Turning back to the world and lore for a moment, it is clear that the developers spent a lot of effort on making a compelling visual experience for the player. Yet, I couldn’t help but feel that they missed a grand opportunity. While there is some dialog in the small hub world for the game, it’s just too little! There isn’t a lot of dialog text for the characters while you are there. It seemed like at least two of the characters only had 4-5 lines of dialog in the whole game after they were introduced. Nor is there much history of the world actually explained. The few scraps of lore every few levels are good, but they could have expanded on it so much more!

Gameplay Balance Issues

Finally, after unlocking certain modes, it did not seem that my character was getting that much stronger over time. Sometimes when I did the endless mode, I could make it to wave 6, but then I would never come close to that stage again for the next 20 minutes. This is despite me using the same build for my character during that time. It was quite frustrating, and it wasn’t until I changed to one specific special attack that I could be successful in endless mode consistently. In fact, it was in this mode that I discovered one of the magics to be really overpowered, which was disappointing from a game balance perspective.

Conclusion

As I was coming to the end of the game, I had a strong sense that this was a really great game and I was impressed by it in a couple of areas. Especially the music and the art design! Sadly, I was also let down by the shallow lore of the world, confusing translation and menu text, and the ending wasn’t very satisfying. Consequently, I consider this to be a pretty good fast-paced action and tower defense game. That is, if you think of yourself as being the tower. To say it is a shooter is stretching it because the only time it behaves like a twin-stick shooter is during the flying levels and they are the smallest part of the game. If you want to play the game now, it is still available on Nintendo Switch, PS4 (this version is discounted 90%, down to $1.49, until May 28, 2025), and Xbox One & Xbox Series X/S. It’s also available on Apple and Android phones. I consider the game worth buying when on sale for $5 or less.

Title: Towaga: Among Shadows (Apple App Store Link)
Genre: Action, Tower Defense Hybrid
Year Released: 2020
Developer: Sunnyside Games
Played On: Steam
Price Paid: Free

Remember, we can have different opinions about the games we play. If you like something more (or less) than I do, both of our perspectives are valid.