You know that sensation of seeing something unfinished? I wish there were a word for that. But I bet you know what I’m talking about.
When you look over at some IKEA furniture you bought a few years ago—maybe a table—and you haven’t assembled it yet. You want to. Maybe you even opened the box, but never finished it.
Or when you see a book on your shelf. You started it, made it to Chapter 6. The old bookmark still pokes out. Every so often, you take it down, glide your hand along the cover, then the spine—but you just don’t have it in you to crack it open and keep reading.
Personally, I get that feeling a lot. Looking at my Steam library. Which, by the way, now numbers in the thousands. But when I scroll through it, the same question keeps popping up:
Why is it that finishing something so small… often feels so big?
I think the answer has less to do with the thing itself—and more to do with what the thing represents. It’s about time. Memory.
You started it when you were younger. And for your younger self’s sake, you want to finish it. But time moves on. You’ve got responsibilities. You’ve got to be a grown-up.
And yet, these things stick around. They’re like ghosts. Hovering. Whispering.
For me, one of those ghosts was a top-down shooter I bought in 2015. That was the year I went full-bore into Steam. I embraced PC gaming with gutso. I went on a buying spree—probably bought too much. Hell, I still do. But back then I definitely did. Because games were dirt cheap.
I thought to myself, “It’s never going to get cheaper than this.”
You’ve got to understand—before 2015, I was mostly a console gamer. Xbox 360, Wii. But I swore off new consoles. Everything was getting too expensive. And even old consoles felt overpriced at the time. Which is hilarious now. Retro gaming today is a luxury hobby.
But PC? On PC, I could get great games for a dollar. Not just shovelware—classics. So I bought every good game I could find around that price.
One game stood out.
Not because I was new to PC gaming—I wasn’t. I’d done plenty of PC gaming in the ‘80s and ‘90s. And one of my favorite genres was the top-down shooter. I grew up with Alien Syndrome on the Commodore 64. Later, I played it again on the Sega Master System. But the C64 version? Absolutely amazing.
In the ‘90s, top-down shooters started picking up serious steam: Catacomb (not 3D, the original), Take No Prisoners, Alien Breed, MageSlayer. There was just something about that genre I loved.
Don’t get me wrong—I like run-and-gun games. I like first-person shooters. But top-down shooters? They scratch a different itch. Tactical. Strategic. Like watching four planets at once. That’s why I love them.
So in 2015, I saw this top-down shooter going for a dollar. It looked solid. Not amazing, but well above average. It scratched that nostalgic itch. So I bought it.
That game was Shadowgrounds.
I remember firing it up—and man, it hooked me. The voice acting? Comically bad. The cutscenes? Deep in the uncanny valley. But it had a thing. You’re a maintenance worker on Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s moons. A human colony, far from Earth. And everything goes wrong.
You’ve got a flashlight and a gun. Aliens start attacking—and they’re afraid of the light. At first.
So you’re constantly sweeping the flashlight to keep them at bay. But they flank you. From behind. From the sides. It becomes this constant dance: aim the light, shoot, move, aim again. And the enemies escalate—more violent, more grotesque. But you’re collecting weapons too: machine guns, shotguns, grenade launchers. And once you hit the heavy artillery? It’s game on.
I loved it. I sank hours into it.
But I never made it past level one.
Why? The save system was beyond stupid.
Level one takes at least half an hour. There are no checkpoints. You can’t save mid-level. The only time the game saves is when you beat a level.
And level one on medium difficulty? Hard.
Every time I played, I’d sink time into it… then quit. Later I’d try again—on a new machine, a new install, a new Steam Deck. Always restarting. Always back at level one.
You get five lives. Die five times? Game over.
I didn’t finish it. But it haunted me.
Not just because I liked the game—but because I liked the genre. And because, at the time, top-down shooters were making a quiet comeback.
Hotline Miami. The Hong Kong Massacre. Redeemer.
Even Halo released two top-down shooters—Spartan Assault and Spartan Strike. Nobody talks about them, but they exist. And they’re good.
Shadowgrounds was an early entry in that revival. It came out in 2005—when top-down shooters weren’t even a blip. Its physical box described it as “Doom 3 meets Smash TV.” Hilarious.
Because it’s nothing like either. But I get why they said it: in 2005, people didn’t remember Alien Breed. They needed a frame of reference.
Truth is, Shadowgrounds is a spiritual successor to Alien Breed. Even the aliens move similarly.
And there’s irony in all this—because the first-person shooter, the juggernaut genre of PC gaming, owes its existence to the top-down shooter. Catacomb 3D—id's first FPS—was a 3D version of Catacomb, a top-down shooter.
Early FPS level design was heavily influenced by top-down layouts. And for good reason. Top-down is tactical. You see everything. FPS is about surprise. Each room is a mystery.
But in the '90s, FPS games had one major flaw: the maps. You got lost easily. I remember getting lost in Heretic constantly, opening the map just to navigate—at which point, it basically was a top-down shooter.
Eventually, game design improved. But that early influence stuck.
By the 2000s, though, 2D was considered outdated. AAA games had to be 3D. On the N64, for example, I can’t recall many 2D games. Maybe a few—but you could count them on one hand.
In the early 2000s, 2D existed mostly on handhelds or as low-budget PC games. Shadowgrounds was one of those. A premium budget title. Not AAA, but made with care.
It wasn’t 2D either—not exactly. It was 2.5D. Fully polygonal models. 3D character models. But with that classic top-down perspective.
You could tell they put love into this thing. The level design, the weapons, even the soundtrack.
Speaking of the soundtrack—phenomenal. One of the best I’ve heard from that era.
The composer? Ari Pulkkinen. Yeah, the guy who later did Angry Birds and Trine. This was one of his first soundtracks. And the guitars? Played by Amen, the guitarist from Lordi.
Which is wild, because Lordi won Eurovision in 2006—the year this game hit its marketing stride. And they barely promoted that connection! They thank Lordi in the credits, but that’s it.
Anyway, Shadowgrounds mattered. Not just to me. It helped kick off the top-down revival.
Five years later, Team17 brought back Alien Breed with the Alien Breed Trilogy. And they went back to the top-down perspective, even though they’d shifted to first-person years earlier with Alien Breed 3D.
Valve got in on it too—with Alien Swarm. Originally using Unreal Engine, then ported to Source.
Top-down shooters were back. And for me, the 2010s were defined by them.
My favorite game of all time? Hotline Miami. Best soundtrack I’ve ever heard in a game. Incredible story. There are documentaries about it—and rightly so.
Other recent favorites: OTXO—brilliant. The Ascent—phenomenal atmosphere. Neon Chrome—oozes that midnight feel.
This genre? It keeps delivering.
And yet… every time I launch Steam, there it is. Shadowgrounds. Staring me down.
Why haven’t you finished me?
Like a ghost. Like the Telltale Heart—beating in the floorboards.
I must’ve played level one for six, maybe seven hours over the years. Last weekend, I woke up and said:
“Today is the day. I’m going to finish this damn game.”
I checked online—estimated playtime was six hours. So I fired it up. On Easy mode.
I played it slow. One level at a time. Do a chore, come back. Go for a walk, come back.
I didn’t finish Saturday. Made it to level 8. The Emicron Research Facility.
And I started loving the game.
Even the voice acting. Once I realized it wasn’t serious, it became endearing. The main character—a maintenance guy who somehow becomes a badass alien-killer—had real John McClane vibes.
The aliens? Unique. One had Gatling guns for arms. Another could cloak but if you shined your flashlight at it—boom, there it was.
I love that “alone in space, fighting aliens” trope. It never gets old.
Saturday night, right before bed, I told myself: Tomorrow. No excuses. Finish it.
Sunday morning, I showered, ate, sat down—and dove in.
The final boss? Brutal. Even on Easy. I died on my first attempt.
Then I realized: I hadn’t upgraded a single weapon.
How did I play this entire game without upgrading once? Because the upgrade system feels hidden. You don’t press Escape or Tab. You press Enter.
So I upgraded. Tried again. Got impatient—took too many shortcuts and paid the price. Used up all my lives. Game over.
Third time, I played smart. Tactical. Terminator mode. Cleared the level with precision.
I made it to the boss room. Both of us had one sliver of health left. Either he died or I died. All it took was one shot.
I fired.
Bam.
Boss died.
I won. Trigger the final cutscene which revealed a twist in the story. Then the end credits.
And I felt it. Deep in my gut. Ten years. Finally finished.
Not a big accomplishment in the grand scheme. I wouldn’t compare it to, say, having a child.
But it meant something.
It was a gift to my younger self. And to the present me, too.
That’s what I love about games like this—single-player campaigns where you’re not competing against someone else. You’re competing against yourself. Outwitting the computer. Pushing through. Growing.
When I beat that final boss, I sat back and said out loud, “I really did it.”
I tied off an old thread from my past.
And now?
Shadowgrounds is done. I’m uninstalling it from all my machines. Because I’m finished.
And it’s finished, too.
