Edna's Shadow - The New Challenge

Recently TNT has released an awesome new game, entitled "Edna's Shadow". It has immediately become a hit, and Neopians everywhere are talking about it! This game features that spooky witch, Edna the Zafara. Living in the Haunted Woods all those years has certainly gotten to her and she now has a shadow following her around and helping her to collect ingredients for all her freaky potions. You play as Edna AND her shadow. (I would like to note that I am very pleased on how original this game is; I have rarely seen games like this on other websites. Thank you so much TNT, for all the work you put into this!)

The game starts you off easily enough with no enemies at all. This is simply so that you can accustom yourself to the controls and movement pattern, as well as the ingredients you are going to be collecting. Easy, right? Dead wrong. Controlling both Edna and her shadow at the same time can be quite challenging at first, so even the first level is extremely difficult. You use the four basic arrow keys on your keyboard to move, as well as the space bar to shoot. You and your shadow move at the same time, but in opposite directions from one another (when going from side to side). So, for instance:

You push the up arrow on your keyboard, and both Edna and her shadow go up. But if you were to push the left arrow on your keyboard, Edna would go left, but her shadow would go right. If you push the right arrow on your keyboard Edna will go right, and her shadow will go left. When you push the down arrow on your keyboard they will both go down, however.

And so, in this most awkward fashion you must collect all the ingredients for her delicious (or not so delicious) potions, without running into the bad guys. The bad guys are:

1. A small critter that looks like a Baby Buzz
2. An imp that looks like a mini brain tree
3. A little black bat with sharp teeth
4. A tiny gray ghost that looks freaky

These four enemies move around in patterns that are somewhat easy to predict. (Thank goodness!) Just watch them for a little while, and you should be able to tell where they will go next and avoid them. But if they still manage to touch you or your shadow, then that half is trapped, though the other one can still move around. Just for a short example:

You are moving around minding your own business and collecting ingredients for the potions when a bat flies into Edna! You quickly move Edna's shadow by itself, over to where Edna is trapped in place. When her shadow touches her, she can move around again and things go back to normal.

If however, Edna gets trapped, and you move her shadow over to get her free, but a ghost touches it and traps it too, it's game over. Sorry! In other words: If both Edna and her shadow get trapped in place at the same time, you lose. You only get one life, so be very careful! As a side note, when one is trapped the other one cannot collect ingredients.

Now, do not think that you have no way to defend yourself against these spooky enemies! If a ghost or bat or anything else comes right in front of Edna or her shadow, you can use the space bar to shoot magic green flames at them to kill them. (Please note that you can only hit them if they are directly in front of you or your shadow, as the flames do not shoot far). When you push the space bar, Edna AND her shadow will both shoot. Nifty, huh?

There are six different ingredients Edna needs to get, but I think you can figure out what they are for yourself. Pretty much anything that does not move is something you want to get.

There are a few different bonuses to help you along the way as well, once you get to higher levels:

1. The golden pocket watch (adds a bit of time)
2. The red bottle (reverses Edna's direction. Warning: This makes it very confusing at first!)
3. The green orb (stuns all the enemies)

To successfully complete a level you need to gather ALL the ingredients and direct Edna and her shadow both to the cauldron. If you have all the ingredients, green goo will be bubbling inside the cauldron. If it's not, but you are almost certain you got them all, you should still look around again; you probably missed something. In order to win the level, you need to get Edna and her shadow to touch each side of the cauldron at EXACTLY the same time. If they don't touch at the same time, they'll simply run past it.

At the end of the level the score is tallied up. Your score is based on the ingredients you got, and you also get a time bonus, so you should try to do it as quickly as possible!

As for tips and tricks, I have only one thing to say: If you find that for some reason Edna and her Shadow are no longer evenly spaced from each other (this happens most often when one has been trapped, but it can also happen quite easily when one has run into a wall and the other one didn't), run them into two walls that are even with one another. This will even them out again. The importance of keeping them even is that if they aren't, they can not touch the cauldron at the same time. It can also throw off your maneuvering, as it makes it rather confusing.

Good luck, and I hope this article has helped you in learning how to play Neopia's new and most exciting game, "Edna's Shadow"!