When corporeal, the character follows familiar stealth movement conventions (crouching, walking, running, jumping) preserving genre readability and player expectations.

Entering Shadow Merge introduces a different movement grammar: traversal along shadowed surfaces, wall climbing, unseen movement... Rather than replacing traditional locomotion, this state extends the movement spectrum with its own risks and limitations.

Movement options forms a deliberate risk-reward curve:

• Slower corporeal movement favours silence and control

• Shadow Merge offers faster undetected traversal constrained by light and stamina

• Running provides maximum speed at the cost of noise and exposure. 

This layering encourages players to continuously switch states based on the situation.

Transitions into and out of Shadow Merge preserve player momentum. Players can run into shadows, leap out of them, or enter a shadowed wall mid-jump without interrupting movement.

This continuity enables expressive play under pressure and rewards mastery with faster, more fluid stealth routes, while also increasing the risk of exposure and vulnerability when transitions are mistimed.

Shadow Merge introduces deliberate constraints. Exiting shadows carries brief vulnerability, traversal requires active light and obstacle avoidance, and time spent merged is limited by stamina.

Light exposure is communicated through immediate feedback on the character and screen, briefly allowing players to react quickly before breaking the state. These limits prevent the mechanic from replacing all other movement options, preserving tension and forcing players to commit to their actions during stealth.

When entering Shadow Merge, the camera subtly zooms out and applies a distinct visual treatment to the screen. This reinforces the state change while expanding the players’ field of awareness.

As traversal possibilities increase in shadow mode, the wider framing ensures players can anticipate routes, vertical paths, and light threats without relying on trial and error.

Camera positioning and lighting were calibrated to avoid flattening shadow volumes, preserving clear spatial readability. In corporeal mode, ground contact remains always visible to help players precisely read shadow boundaries.

Because Shadow Merge supports wall climbing and vertical traversal, the camera allows up to 180º pitch in both corporeal and shadow states. This ensures players can evaluate potential paths above and below them without artificial constraints. And when the camera is too close, a transparent shader is applied to the character, to prevent her body from blocking player's view.

The camera has several minimal and non-intrusive assistances, aimed for supporting player intent without removing risk. For example, during long descents, the camera subtly anticipates landing areas, maintaining visibility of potential shadow surfaces.

The goal is to facilitate clarity, so failure would come from player decision and not lack of spatial awareness.

In specific high-precision traversal sections, fixed and rail camera setups are used to temporarily constrain perspective. By reducing camera management demands, these moments allow players to focus entirely on timing and movement execution.

These controlled viewpoints are exceptions, used deliberately to support pacing and clarity rather than restrict player freedom.

Shadow Merge is activated by holding a dedicated input (RT on gamepad, right mouse button on keyboard/mouse). The hold interaction reinforces the state as temporary and intentional, allowing players to fluidly enter and exit shadows without toggling friction.

This mapping preserves full directional control with the movement hand, maintaining precision.

On horizontal surfaces, movement remains camera-relative, preserving familiarity with traditional third-person stealth navigation.

When traversing vertical surfaces in Shadow Merge, movement shifts to surface-relative logic (so up is always up along the wall, right is always right...), ensuring directional consistency during climbing.

Edge cases, such as non-forward transition from horizontal to vertical, or descending forward off vertical surfaces, were handled to prevent unintended camera and movement behaviours.

To preserve flow during fast traversal, input buffering was implemented when landing into shadowed surfaces. This allows (and requires) players to commit to Shadow Merge slightly before contact.

The goal was to reward the Shadow Land execution while maintaining it a balanced challenge given the player fantasy we were pursuing.

Shadow Merge ends through player release or stamina depletion. Light contact accelerates stamina drain rather than forcing immediate ejection, giving players a chance for correcting mistakes and making failure the result of resource management rather than abrupt system overrides.

This consistency ensures that transitions feel fair and readable, even during high-speed navigation.

Not only Shadow Merge depended on players instantly knowing whether they can or not merge in shadows, but also on quickly recognising if any point in screen is in shadows or not. And this had to work like this under different conditions: dynamic lighting, interiors/exteriors, time of day...

I worked closely with the Art, Graphics and Level Design teams to establish clear visual rules for shadow/light contrast and make sure the art direction supported this gameplay. Some examples included:

• Use of hard-lights only

  • So the cut between the light and the shadow is 100% clear.

• No overlapping lights allowed

  • So there's no confusion between stronger light - lower light - no light in the frame.

• Consistent light and darkness intensity

  • So a shadowed zone is recognisable without a light reference and viceversa.

After lots of iterations and playtests, I'm proud we could mitigate this issue to become practically non-existent.

Shadow Merge required a detection system that was both precise and performant. I designed, along with Programming, a solution based on raycasts to nearby lights combined with simplified shadow volumes.

By design, this meant visual shadows and gameplay shadows would not naturally match. The challenge was ensuring players trusted what they saw while keeping the system scalable and reliable.

To bridge that gap, I worked closely with Art, Programming and Level Design to establish art guidelines and level-building workflows, designed tools such as invisible shadow casters when needed, and implemented debug visualisations so level designers could immediately see gameplay shadow volumes during iteration. 

This allowed artists and level designers to work with minimal overhead while keeping Shadow Merge consistent, predictable, and aligned with player expectations.

In early versions, touching a light immediately expelled the player from Shadow Merge. Internal playtests found this clear, but external players described it as unfair, confusing, or bug-like.

I analysed the issue and how it was perceived, and broke it down into two issues:

• Players did not understand why they were being expelled.

• Being expelled near enemies or in platforming sections was too punishing, with almost no chance to react and recover.

With this in mind, I changed the light exposure behaviour to rapidly drain stamina instead of forcing instant exit, and added visual, UI and audio cues to clearly signal light contact. This provided visible feedback and a short reaction window while preserving risk.

After the change, players understood the cause of failure and could respond under pressure.

Shadow Merge is inherently powerful, providing invisibility, high mobility, and traversal shortcuts. While intentional, early versions allowed players to bypass encounters too easily for a stealth-focused game.

I worked with the Programming, Art and Level teams to introduce organic friction that required route planning instead of permanent merging: stamina limits, exit vulnerability, light placement guidelines, ground-level objectives that required leaving safe shadow paths and enemies that countered Shadow Merge.

These constraints preserved player freedom while maintaining tension and encounter relevance.

And for advanced players, we also added a harder mode where (among other things) Shadow Merge stamina refills only while inside shadows, encouraging more deliberate and tactical play.