Shadowfire

Players control all six characters and have one hour and forty minutes of realtime to rescue Ambassador Kryxix and capture General Zoff. All six characters have different abilities. Syylk is an insectoid and a strong fighter; Zark Montor, the team leader, is an expert in unarmed combat and the translator of the group - meaning that Kryxix will only follow Montor; Sevrina Maris is the only character who can pick locks; Torik is an avian and the fastest moving character; Maul is a slow powerful combat droid; and Manto is a weak droid, but the only team member that can operate the transporter that is vital for the mission's success.

Controls are completely icon based and the screen is divided into several sections. The upper screen section is called the mission command screen and displays which character is active, the active character's location and the status of all characters: whether they are moving, engaged in combat, weak or dying or performing certain action such as picking locks. The lower half of the screen changes depending on the situation and shows additional information and all selectable actions.

General Zoff, a traitor to the Empire, is holding Ambassador Kryxix captive in his spaceship. Plans for a new type of spaceship (the Shadowfire of the game's title) are contained in a micro-disc hidden in the Ambassador's spine. If Zoff gets the plans, the empire will be in great danger and it is only a matter of time until his inquisitors will discover them. The Emperor has assembled the Enigma Force, a group of six operatives who are "the cream of the Empire's legions, the worst of its criminal scum or the latest development in cybernetics". The player's task is to rescue Kryxix, and capture both Zoff, and his starship, the Zoff V.

Denton Designs consisted of former employees of Imagine Software who had been working on the infamous Bandersnatch game when the company went into administration. The initial idea for Shadowfire came from Ian Weatherburn who then moved to Ocean Software after being sacked for wanting the company to be more like Imagine. The Enigma Force team were based on characters in American comics, in particular the X-Men and Teen Titans, with artist Simon Butler directly copying the poses from the comics for use in the game manual. The use of icons to control the characters was inspired by the interface of the Apple Lisa computers that had been used at Imagine, and publisher Beyond promoted the game as "the first adventure without text".

Shadowfire was unusual at the time in that it was released with the ZX Spectrum version coded by John Heap on one side of the cassette, and the Commodore 64 version by Dave Colclough on the other. It was later ported to the Amstrad CPC.

Shadowfire was well-received on both released platforms, gaining a 96% Crash "Smash" for the ZX Spectrum version, a Classic award from Sinclair User and a 91% "Sizzler" award from ZZap!64 for the Commodore 64 version.

Info gave it four stars out of five, describing it as "a very stylish import". While disliking the "tiresome" icon-based controls, the magazine concluded that it was "an unusual and entertaining space-opera offering". The innovative interface, multi-character gameplay and atmospheric music by Fred Gray were also favourably commented upon.