SHADOWWORKS is a paper-theatre detective bureau. We don't build games; we project them. Each title is a cut silhouette against a single bare bulb — a noir reel where the player reads the shadow on the wall, not the figure holding the scissors. The lamp flickers. You get one tell before it blows.
A interrogation sim played entirely in shadow. Two silhouettes face each other across a bare bulb. You never see faces — only the lean, the hand-rise, the cigarette tap. Ask a question; the shadow either stills or twitches. One tell per suspect. Miss it and the reel burns to white. Based on a 1947 vice dossier we found behind the projector.
A walking sim through a cut-out city where the rain is a strobe and every passer-by is a cardboard profile. You follow a hat. The hat turns a corner; the bulb flickers; the corner is gone. The whole game is three minutes long and ends the same way it begins — with a shadow reaching for a light switch that isn't there.
A puzzle game where the only control is a shutter. Open it a slit and the shadow on the wall resolves one detail — a gun, a ring, a lie. Open too far and the bulb blows; the room goes black and the case cold. Players map the dossier by memory of light. The bureau's own unsolved files are the late levels.
Our magnum opus: a six-reel feature where the bulb dims progressively across acts. By reel five the shadows are almost invisible; by reel six you're playing by sound and cigarette glow alone. We've been cutting it since 2019 between bureau cases. Estimated premiere: when the current 40W finally goes — could be tonight.
SHADOWWORKS rents Room 2F above a dead Mercer Street pawnshop. One window, boarded. One chair, one bulb, one projector with no film — we cut our own cels from black card and brass pins. Five operatives work the reel desk; the rest are silhouettes we haven't identified yet. We don't greenlight. We expose.
A title starts as a dossier. We read the cold case, mark the tells, and cut the suspect profiles from cardstock. The "engine" is a shutter and a bulb — open it a finger's width and the shadow tells you what the file couldn't. A game is finished when the lamp flickers on the final cut and the room holds its breath. If the bulb blows mid-reel, the case is closed unsolved. That's allowed.
The bureau keeps one rule from the 1947 charter: *the figure holding the scissors is never shown*. The player reads the shadow or they read nothing. The lamp decides the tell. The cigarette decides the pause.
Can call a twitch from a shadow at 40W. Cut The Second Tell from a real 1947 vice transcript. Keeps the bulb in his coat pocket between reels. Says a good lie has a 2-frame lean. Hasn't seen his own face in the mirror since he took the room.
Cuts every profile from a single sheet of black card, brass-pinned to the rail. Built the cardboard Mercer Street of Mercer Street Rain over one wet November. Refuses digital cels — "pixels don't lean." Sleeps under the cutting bench.
Runs the bulb. Times every flicker to the frame. Designed the dimming curve of The Long Blackout so reel six is playable on cigarette glow alone. Keeps a pack of 1947 matches on the desk. Claims the lamp talks, but only between 2 and 3 a.m.