In this action/adventure game, you play a police detective, from 1947 London. Your specialty is investigating missing person reports and you've been called in to find out what happened in the sleepy village of Hawksmill. For no apparent reason, the entire population has vanished and you must find out what happened.

From what I can gather, this game has much in common with Psytronik's “Rocky Memphis The Legend of Atlantis”, which was released last year. I haven't played Legend of Atlantis, but from looking at the screenshots and reading the write-up for the game, the two are very similar. It makes sense, as Stuart Collier, Saul Cross and Trevor Story worked together on both of these games. So, I'm going to assume, if you liked Legend of Atlantis, you're probably going to enjoy The Shadow Over Hawksmill.

The game starts off just as described, the village is empty and all you have is your trusty pistol, some ammo, and your wits. As you explore the village, you can inspect/search object for clues by pressing down on the joystick. The first thing you'll be looking for are keys to unlock the doors to the houses that surround you. It won't be long before you encounter nasty creatures that will drain your life force. Luckily, they are vulnerable to regular old bullets. Lose enough of your life force and it's game over. But, you can replenish your life force by eating apples, which are hidden among the searchable objects.

You can carry multiple items, but can only use one at a time. To change what you're holding, you can either use your joystick by holding down, then press the fire button to switch. Or, you can use the F1 and F3 keys to cycle through the items in your inventory. Use F5 or P to pause the game and F7 to eat one of your life saving apples (if you have them in your inventory). If you're playing the game on TheC64 or TheC64Mini, you can map the F-keys to the function buttons on the TheC64 Joystick, which is really handy and makes it easy for you to switch inventory items. (I've included a CJM file that I've created for the game in the summary table above.)

The game looks and sounds great. The graphics are highly detailed, and I like the use of shadows to add the sense of depth to the environment. There's no background music in the game, but there are environmental sound effects that really add to the overall atmosphere. The animations are nice and smooth and very responsive, even on the TheC64Mini.

One of the design choices that I like was that the game is forgiving when attempting to climb a ladder or jump to a platform. You don't have to be at an exact precise spot to climb a ladder and, if you're just little shy of hitting a platform when you jump, your character (Inspector Black, by the way) can grab on to the edge and pull himself up. Fantastic!

When shooting your pistol, you can either fire one shot at a time, or hold down the fire button to shoot multiple times. When you hold down the fire button, you can also then aim your gun to shoot higher or lower, to target certain baddies. But, be warned that this makes you go through your ammunition much faster. Unfortunately, though, I've found that using up ammo is about the only way I can make progress in the game, because at times, these little buggers are right on top of you when entering a screen. So, I sometimes have to go in shooting.

This is my only negative thing I have experienced with the game. For the most part, the enemies are black and they hide in black areas of the screen. Therefore, unless you've been there before and memorize their locations, you aren't going to see them before they jump or swoop down on to you. They also don't always re-spawn when you leave and re-enter the screen. So, I find myself wasting ammo shooting into the dark, unsure if there's an enemy waiting for me or not.

There are a few places in the levels (that I've discovered so far) where you can reload your ammo, but they're so far and few between, it makes it frustrating at times to make progress. And sometimes, you use up more ammo trying to get back to the reload screen because of the re-spawning baddies. So, here's one of the major advantages of playing this game on TheC64Mini (or Maxi): if your aim is as terrible as mine, save your game frequently. There are no save states built into the game, and unless you're a master adventurer, you may find making progress difficult.

This game is a puzzle solving adventure, you if you're the kind of person that likes to explore, collect objects and figure out where they go/how they're used, then you're going to enjoy The Shadow Over Hawksmill. I haven't completed the game, as of writing this review, but I've been able to figure out a couple of the game's puzzles so far. If I can figure them out, then anyone can.

Without giving any of the mysteries away, I will give you one hint to start off with: when you find a coloured key, try and go back to the village as soon as you can and inspect the corresponding house. What you find inside there will greatly improve your chances at making progress down in the caverns.

If you're looking for a game for your C64 that will keep you entertained for a good while, then The Shadow Over Hawksmill may just be up your alley.

Composed on my C128 with ArcheType.