Summary
- N-Gage-exclusive Shadowkey faded into obscurity but is being brought to PC.
- AI helped build the port, including coding, engine work, debugging, plus AI image gen and manual sprite edits.
- Shadowkey Reforged launches Nov 11 on PC; you must provide your own original game files to play.
Remember the good old days of spending your summer holidays playing The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey until it got dark? Yeah, me neither.
Shadowkey only came out for the Nokia N-Gage, which was a very early take on the idea of a phone mixed with a gaming handheld. As such, not many people managed to give it a try. Now, someone has used AI to port it over to the PC, and it will be released very soon.
It’s thanks to the help of AI
As spotted by PC Gamer, Dan Whelan is releasing The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey Reforged on November 11th. The Travels series was a lesser-known spinoff from The Elder Scrolls, focused on giving players a portable experience. There were titles such as Stormhold and Dawnstar that were released for Java-enabled mobile/J2ME/BREW phones, and there were even ports of Oblivion to Java phones and the PlayStation Portable.
However, Shadowkey wasn’t as prolific. It was released as an N-Gage exclusive and didn’t receive great review scores, meaning it faded into obscurity when the N-Gage did. Now, Whelan is bringing the game to the PC with the help of AI.
Here’s how Whelan details their AI disclosure:
How was AI used to make it?
I used AI to assist with coding and building the engine, and with debugging. I used AI image generation combined with Photoshop and some manual sprite editing to create most of the modern, higher resolution artwork.
Whelan didn’t say which model they picked to get the job done, but with so many decompiles and ports being done with Claude, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was used here, too. Regardless, you can grab Shadowkey Reforged from its website once it releases, and you’ll need your own game files to play it.
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