The game starts with a boy imprisoned and seemingly suspended in mid air. A stranger enters and strikes at the boy with an odd looking sword. Oddly, this does not harm the boy but it does sever the connection between him and his shadow, which the stranger throws from the tower. In the story the player takes the role of the shadow as it works its way through the tower to the top. During this journey the player must stay in the shaded areas and can, for the most part, only interact with the shadows of things and not things themselves. In this quest the player is aided by 'Spangle', a sylph who can sometimes usefully change the angle of light - thus changing the shadows of objects and thus making impossible jumps achievable and unreachable objects accessible.