White Shadows is a Puzzle-Platformer (similar to Little Nightmares) released on July 12, 2021, and is the first game created by game studio Monokle.

Set in a dark, mechanical world illuminated in electric lights, you play a young raven girl who must survive an Orwellian world of machines, animal people, and an oppressive, hyper-industrialized system that has grown beyond the people within it.

The game is playable on PlayStation 5, GeForce Now, Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X|S, and Mac operating systems.

White Shadows contains examples of:

• Bread and Circuses: The Funworld Trials is a show on Funworld Tele Vision that features "A dirty little plague bird" (the Player Character) having to survive a gauntlet of hazards at the behest of a wolf-headed ringmaster automaton for the entertainment of an audience of pigs. After "winning", the raven is infused with light and led up to a rocket that will supposedly send her upward... only to be given a Parasol Parachute and unceremoniously dumped from the bottom as a cruel prank.
  Title Card: Order is restored... Everyone is happy... Except birds! (laughter)
• Deliberately Monochrome: Fitting the German Expressionist aesthetic, the entire game is in grayscale.
• Fantastic Caste System: While this society boasts about being about equality among animals, some animals are more equal than others. It's implied that Wolves are the ones that rule over the Ministry of Light, though they are never seen in-game. Then there are Rats that act as the Secret Police. Pigs seem to act as the society's primary workforce and are its biggest consumers (until they are eventually made into batteries). Chickens are kept as slaves in concentration camp-esque factory farms, forced to lay eggs that are used to produce more batteries. Ravens are at the very bottom (literally and figuratively) and hunted on sight when they aren't used as fodder for Funhouse Tele Vision.
• Fantastic Racism: All birds exist at the very bottom of this world (both literally and sociologically), but ravens have it the worst. The setting even goes so far as to equate ravens with Darkness itself, with Light being worshipped by the pigs that populate this world.
  Only a dead bird is a good bird...
• Fantastic Slurs: Ravens are referred to as "Plague Birds" by this society, having allegedly caused illness at the society's founding and used as The Scapegoat so that The Wolves could take power.
• Gainax Ending: After it's more or less established that the little raven girl is The Chosen One destined to end the society's despotism, she eventually finds herself in a waiting room where she has to wait for her number (A38) to be called out. Right before she is called, an identical raven girl with similar artificial wings shows up and takes a seat next to her. A38 leaves when her number is called, and the player takes control of the new girl, then proceeds to finish what the first girl started. She answers the ringing phone, the player is not privy to what they're saying, and she shuts off the power.
• Light Is Good: The state belief is this. Citizens (pigs) are encouraged to take daily light baths and their whole society seems to revolve around the manufacturing of batteries to keep the lights on. Inversely, it believes that Dark Is Evil, with ravens painted as a shorthand for their darkness. While the idea of "light" and "darkness" being good and bad is subjective in this setting, the raven girl turning off the lights in the ending makes this symbolism a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
• Moses Archetype: The raven girl was born into a system that wanted either to kill or enslave her, had managed to evade everything that tried at infancy, and eventually found her way to her people in Bird Town. She finds herself fulfilling the role of a prophet who will liberate her people from the system that has abused them, managing to do so with what can be generously described as angel wings. The identical raven girl who shows up and finishes her journey for her near the very end can even be read as a parallel to Joshua, who led the Israelites into the Promised Land after Moses dies.
• The Night That Never Ends: The society was built from the ground up after a devastating war that "killed the sun". The entire world is illuminated with artificial lighting, the world's Propaganda Machine going so far as to treat artificial light as a form of holy sacrament.
• One Nation Under Copyright: Brightglow is the company that sells the batteries that keeps the lights on, with every single ad associated with Brightglow having a seal of approval from the Ministry of Light. It's implied that pretty much everyone in this society is an "employee" of Brightglow, the pigs and chickens that work there eventually turn into these batteries when the system no longer requires them. Considering the Propaganda Machine of this world equates the artificial light these batteries power as something sacred, it's very likely that some of the animals we see not only know this is happening, but look forward to it.
• Shadow Dictator: The Wolves are implied to be the absolute rulers of this despotic world, but we never actually see them. The living enforcers of this system are rats, and the closest we see to the wolves are mechanical monstrosities made to look like them.
• Sons of Slaves: The birds of Bird Town are either the descendants of or were slaves of the system, forced to build the world's infrastructure before either escaping or being cast out, founding Bird Town at the very bottom of the world.
• Whole-Plot Reference:
  • Much of the game's lore is based off of George Orwell's Animal Farm, being a World of Funny Animals originally built from egalitarian ideals, only for it to fall into authoritarianism.
  • Aesthetically, the game borrows a lot from Metropolis, being a Diesel Punk science-fiction world with themes based around societal classism and the mechanization of those within it.
• You Are Number Six: Fitting the game's dystopian setting, none of the characters actually have names. When things aren't just credited to the Ministry of Light or Brightglow, individuals are labelled numbers. In the credits to The Funworld Trials, everyone there is labeled "The Wolf" or "pig [number]". Even the Player Character doesn't have a name, instead being associated with "A38"; she's the star of Episode A38 of The Funworld Trials, and is given the number A38 in the waiting room in the Gainax Ending.