GemCraft - Chasing Shadows on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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An epic, challenging tower defense game with an emphasis on strategy and replayability. Summon gems of immense magical potency and harness their unique abilities against a seemingly endless horde of monsters. The archdemon seeks to swallow the world, and you must journey to stand against her.
GemCraft - Chasing Shadows is a tower defense, strategy and indie game
developed by Game in a Bottle
and published by Armor Games Studios.
Released on April 30th 2015 is available in English only on Windows.
It has received 4,136 reviews of which 3,939 were positive and 197 were negative resulting in an impressive rating of 9.2 out of 10. 😍
The game is currently priced at 9.75€ on Steam, but you can find it for 0.34€ on Gamivo.
The Steam community has classified GemCraft - Chasing Shadows into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows Vista SP1
- Processor: Intel Celeron N or better
- Memory: 2048 MB RAM
- Graphics: Intel HD Graphics or better
- Storage: 100 MB available space
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
The good: > Good graphics, it's both creepy and pretty at the same time > Little asset reuse (very prevalent in TD games) - every map is different > A LOT of maps that allow you to build your own maze \-> Buildings have incrementally increasing mana costs, building a good maze isn't cheap > Game challenges you to get access to new abilities and upgrading them > A mechanic that allows you to build a talisman with different buffs (cost reductions, +%damage against x, additional spell charge and such) > Infinitely scaling endless mode > Difficulty modifiers that VASTLY increase exp gain, all of which have to be acquired in a way similar to skills > Story told through things you experience on the map (no lazy throwaway mentions, things story relevant have actual mechanics) > A lot of achievements and some of them very creative ones > Replayability, finished the game on all difficulties? Try the ♥♥♥♥ and ball torture of restarting the game on iron wizard The bad > Infinitely scaling endless mode > Soundtrack consists of two, maybe two and a half songs and they're mostly creepy ambience > Gems deal pitiful damage before you get access to poolbound, bloodbound and amplifiers > You may get lost once the hexmap gets pretty big, unsure of which way to go > Shadows are broken bullsh1t Overall, a very solid tower defense game
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This has to be one of my favorite games of all time. I remember first playing the free version online when I was twelve. Years later I came across it on steam and instantly bought it. I think that it is very well designed, and I enjoy both the strategy and grind aspects of it.
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Having came to Steam years ago after pursuing a particular Flash game from the graveyard that is Kongregate and the many joys of modern PC gaming that I'm now getting to truly experience after hearing so much about it, Gemcraft is another of those excellent titles that originated during the Flash days way back in 2008 when the first game 'GemCraft Chapter One: The Forgotten' released and showed the relatively young but growing modern PC audience consisting of many a new gamer what it means to be a tower defence game which, given the competition from the well-established Bloons Tower Defence series, is certainly not an easy feat! It is why I am quite glad to see that the fourth entry of this series, Chasing Shadows, has made its way onto Steam here alongside Frostborn Wrath as I quite fancied revisiting what was a stable of the growing Flash gaming scene back in its hayday whilst also being keen to look at it from the matured lens of an adult rather than that of a still-young gamer. (Although I can't quite explain why the fourth entry here is labelled 'Chapter Two' nor why the first three games have yet to make their way onto Steam, that will be a question for Game in a Bottle to answer!) Though to briefly touch upon the Gemcraft series itself, the gameplay primarily sees you taking the role of a wizard who utilizes various coloured gems that can be placed in towers to destroy a variety of enemies and gain mana from them, each gem having a special effect depending on the colour and the potent of which being upgraded when combined with other gems using said mana that also allows for various hybrid gems to play out a wide variety of tactics. Taking this at its most basic elements, the game gradually expands by introducing traps that enemies can walk onto which greatly reduce damage and range for a significantly-enhanced special effect and amplifiers which render the gem incapable of dealing any damage or effects to enemies directly but give a big boost to gems right next to it in terms of damage and special effects. Other entities, such as mana shards that allow nearby gems to extract mana and beacons which give buffs/healing to nearby enemies until they are destroyed and even scepters which target your highest-grade gem unless killed or are lured with a cheap low-grade one, randomly appear on the map periodically to help give Gemcraft an extra level of complexity and strategy to a degree not quite seen in even the latest Bloons Tower Defence. One of the most striking aspects of Gemcraft, for me personally, is how it depicts the world through its visual artstyle. Not so much on the graphical fidelity side of things, with how the many maps on offer are unfortunately all appear fairly low-resolution even at maximum visual settings, but rather the careful choices made when designing the world and the main entities on display (that being the gems you build and the hordes of enemies you will be fighting against) with how visually pleasing it is to the eye when seeing the colourful gem projetiles in action. Even though I value gameplay above graphics, it is appreciated that Gemcraft has stuck to its own artstyle that is easily distinct from that of the more cartoon-like Bloons series. On the note of content, there is quite a LOT when it comes to how many levels there are on offer, 191 Fields to be precise, and that isn't forgetting about how every level (asides from a few that I'll touch on shortly) has three segments to its emblem, each of these glowing when you have beaten a specific difficulty on it, as this is what both encourages replaying older levels to either grind up XP for harder levels or pursuing specific achievements that are essentially impossible to get without vastly upgraded skills and talismans, so it helps to also have a higher difficulty which affects many elements relating to monster stats, gem costs and other random events. Before I get too far ahead of myself, essentially this game's method of helping the player out and encouraging them is by providing you with a variety of skills (new abilities to attack monsters and enhancing tower types alongside the nine individual gems) and talismans (three types of equippable emblems which grant various small buffs) that can both be upgraded with different currencies. The former uses 'Skill Points' earned by levelling up and attaining the game's many achievements whilst the latter makes use of 'Shadow Cores' which can be acquired naturally by killing regular monsters as a rare occurrence but are dropped in bigger numbers and consistently by such entities as shadows and the scepters I spoke of earlier. Though to address one concern in relation to the 'traditional' difficulty side of things, seeing as these types of games which allow and encourage more 'extrinsic' progression, the rare few levels which highlight a singular fire emblem are designed more in line with the mindset of giving you specific skills/abilities to work with and forbidding any upgrades that the level itself does not give to you. This ensures that each player whenever they reach these levels will all be on an even playing field and will be heavily pushed into actually learning some of the more in-depth mechanics of the gems and how they synergize with other gems and traps/amplifiers, as is to be expected as far as the more 'intrinsic' progress goes. Outside of graphical issues and the odd framerate performance when dealing in the three-digit waves at fast speeds and on high visual settings, one of my biggest gripes comes with a particular game-breaking glitch found in this particular entry of Gemcraft here on Steam. However, it may come as a surprise that it is not one that is actually 'negative' in the normal sense and is entirely a bug that, should the player utilize to its full effect, pretty much renders any difficulty in the game's many levels essentially non-existent. (Hence why this game's rarest achievements currently sit at a surprisingly high 3.4%, save for 'I Have Iron Skills') I'll put this section in spoilers for those not wanting to know about it, however if you prefer to learn about this 'dark and arcane' knowledge as it were, essentially you buy 2 grade-one gems, placing one on a tower and another in your inventory. From there, you point the cursor over the gem on the tower and keep it there followed by holding the shift button and alternate pushing the B and U buttons. This seems to override the normal upgrade cost with the cheapest upgrade to a grade-two gem, meaning you can go straight from a grade-one gem to a very strong grade-thirteen with just the cost of 12 grade-one upgrades. Considering I found out about this after roughly 25 hours of gameplay and struggling with Field V15 when looking up a guide on how to complete it, it's safe to say that the fault is largely on myself for making excessive use of it, however I will leave this forbidden technique with you to decide what to do with. Regardless, Gemcraft - Chasing Shadows is a fairly decent addition to the series overall, with how Gemcraft has a much bigger focus on its system of combining gems and how each of the different tower types interact with these gems alongside the more dynamic opportunities and threats that generate randomly on the map compared to Bloons Tower Defence having a bigger emphasis on tower placement and having a more defined approach to its cast of enemies in the form of various coloured bloons that are more distinct in their roles and threat levels compared to Gemcraft's cast of monsters. Naturally this game won't be for everyone, although if you are on the look out for a more gritty and in-depth tower defence game featuring its own kind of challenges for fans of the genre then Gemcraft - Chasing Shadows has you covered and it is one series from the old Flash days that is thankfully still going strong to this day, one that I am happy to support alongside its more lighthearted monkey/balloon brother!
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I grew up playing GemCraft: Chapter 0 on Armor Games, so finding it has full-fledged, quality sequels is just a massive dose of nostalgia. This series as a whole has the best Tower Defense games of all time, and Chasing Shadows is no exception. Exquisite.
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I remember playing the flash version of this to 100% completion years ago on the Armor Games website. Good times. This is such a good tower defense game, it has been my standard since back then!
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Frequently Asked Questions
GemCraft - Chasing Shadows is currently priced at 9.75€ on Steam.
GemCraft - Chasing Shadows is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 9.75€ on Steam.
GemCraft - Chasing Shadows received 3,939 positive votes out of a total of 4,136 achieving an impressive rating of 9.15.
😍
GemCraft - Chasing Shadows was developed by Game in a Bottle and published by Armor Games Studios.
GemCraft - Chasing Shadows is playable and fully supported on Windows.
GemCraft - Chasing Shadows is not playable on MacOS.
GemCraft - Chasing Shadows is not playable on Linux.
GemCraft - Chasing Shadows is a single-player game.
GemCraft - Chasing Shadows does not currently offer any DLC.
GemCraft - Chasing Shadows does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
GemCraft - Chasing Shadows does not support Steam Remote Play.
GemCraft - Chasing Shadows is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for GemCraft - Chasing Shadows.
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Last Updates| Steam data | 09 March 2026 16:05 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 09 March 2026 13:54 |
| Steam price | 15 March 2026 04:43 |
| Steam reviews | 13 March 2026 20:07 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about GemCraft - Chasing Shadows, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about GemCraft - Chasing Shadows
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- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck GemCraft - Chasing Shadows compatibility
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Game modes
Features
Online players
128
Developer
Game in a Bottle
Publisher
Armor Games Studios
Release
30 Apr 2015
Platforms
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