After two and a half years in development, Aya Games has delivered us a hauntingly beautiful puzzle-based platformer called Ayasa: Shadows of Silence. Narrative-driven and completely dialogue-free, this new indie horror delivers in aesthetics, ambience, and adventure. Developed and published by Aya Games, Ayasa: Shadows of Silence is currently available on Steam/PC. 

In an eerie and mystical world teeming with meaning and symbology, you’ll experience an atmospheric journey as the protagonist, Ayasa. During this adventure, you will traverse through 6 different surreal lands themed around human emotion and behaviour. These themes include: Hope, love, faith, greed, indifference, and betrayal, with each land offering its own unique designs, puzzles, and enemies.

Ayasa herself hails from the land of hope. During your adventures through the various lands of this broken world, you’ll encounter an ever-changing environment of beauty and decay that is littered throughout with heavy symbology and remnants of a storied past. What has happened here? And where are we going? (No, really. What is going on?). 

While progressing through these magical lands, it’s important to remain cautious. You’ll surely encounter enemies during your journey, and they can only be avoided by stealth and cunning. The enemies are AI-controlled and not exactly fun to go against. You aren’t here to fight them; you’re here to hide or run from them. Initially, the game does a poor job at explaining most of this to the player, and I found the combat timing highly inconsistent.

I’d receive a prompt to crouch and be stealthy, but only after an enemy had already spotted me. The nude, featureless enemies are particularly unsatisfying to encounter. But I particularly liked the many-handed beings that patrol certain areas. They’re huge, they have SO MANY hands, and they’re looking for you. It would’ve been nice to encounter them more than the fleshy enemies you see often in the beginning of the game.

Unfortunately, navigating certain levels can feel like a guessing game at times, with enemy AI that’s inconsistent and clunky; there isn’t much room for error. I found myself repeating seemingly simple levels over and over again due to a lack of game direction and poor enemy AI optimisation.

The puzzles are easy to understand, but the levels can be confusing to navigate. It’s difficult to tell if you’ll be side-scrolling or if you need to walk deeper into a level to progress.

After progressing far enough through these levels, you’ll eventually gain access to new powers such as invisibility and the ability to manipulate time and energy. These supernatural abilities are essential for surviving Asaya: Shadows of Silence. 

The visuals and soundtrack used in Ayasa: Shadows of Silence carry the entire game. I really like the way the artists light up certain areas on levels while keeping most of the area cloaked in shadow. There’s also a certain level of whimsy alongside the eerie, dissonant vibe that’s been curated for the game.

It can feel as if you’re running through a chapter from a fairy tale. Moths fluttering around lanterns, iridescent plants that feel alien, and orange glowing window lights escaping from shadowy and contorted wooden homes. 

Upon death, you’ll become very familiar with the loading screen. It’s silent, basic, and it takes too long to load back into the game after dying. Especially considering how many deaths can occur when going against the buggy enemy AI. It was difficult to tell if I had entered a new area or been killed, as the loading screen for everything is the same: An eye staring at you, or a totally blank screen.

It actually made dying feel worse than dying already feels, because now I have to wait a while before I can get back to dying. Yay! I also encountered visual bugs, including floating or missing objects, and the main character’s hair detaching from their body while running.

Ayasa: Shadows of Silence features an entirely original soundtrack composed and inspired by spiritual Armenian music, with artists including Arusyak Karapetyan, Mikayel Navasardyan, David Babayan, and Ayra Arakelyan. The music is classical, and it sounds beautiful, pairing perfectly with the ebb and flow of your travels.

It adds a nice level of fantasy to the game while enhancing its existing visual beauty. Certain areas on levels, however, become instantly silent while listening to the music. It didn’t make sense why music was playing triumphantly and then suddenly stopped mid-song if I crossed a certain plank of wood. 

I’d prefer to watch this game be played than play more of it myself, and even then, I’d surely be watching others struggle to make it through the world. Ayasa: Shadows of Silence is marketed as a horror game, but it isn’t particularly scary. It’s scary in the way a Tim Burton film is scary. I’ve seen people comparing this game to Little Nightmares, and while there are definitely inspired themes present in Ayasa: Shadows of Silence, I wouldn’t say it’s fair to compare it to such a polished game as Little Nightmares.

I have great respect for the effort that Aya Games put into this game, but Ayasa: Shadows of Silence feels underdeveloped, as if it needed to cook in the gaming kitchen a little longer. It did, however, spend plenty of time in the art and design kitchen. 

Written by: Nattia Jones