Shadow Vault

Shadow Vault is a stealth platformer in which light is the whole game. Every floor plan bakes its own picture of the light: moonlight through the tall windows, pillars and balconies cutting hard shadow bars out of the beams, warm lamplight pooling on the marble. That picture is also the rulebook, because the game reads the same image when it asks whether a guard could see you. What looks dark is dark, and what looks lit will give you away.

You run, jump with a forgiving landing window, grab ledges, slide down walls and crawl through the ducts. You can pinch out a lamp to kill its pool for ten seconds, skim a coin across the floor to pull a watchman away from his round, press yourself into a glass case or behind a velvet curtain, and hold the sneak button to cross a creaking floorboard without a sound. Laser grids blink on and off, pressure plates lift the cage bars, and a coin left sitting on a plate keeps them up for you. Get spotted and nobody is hurt: the watchman simply walks you back to the last dark corner you found, and the alarm counter ticks up one.

Fifteen hand-built floors run through three wings: the Sculpture Hall, where you learn to read a beam; the Gem Gallery, with its laser grids, ducts and pressure plates; and the Vault itself, where three torches sweep a single corridor. Each floor is a route from the skylight to the prize and back out to the service door, with a hidden jewel tucked somewhere off the obvious path. Three stars for a clean run under par, your best times kept in your browser, and a sneaky walking bass line playing all the way through.