Shadow Vault is an infamous PC strategy game from Mayhem Studios that was released back in 2004 by Strategy First. As far as I can tell (and from my experience with the game I recently paid a whole penny for), the retail version will not run at all thanks to a Direct Draw error! As far as I can tell NO official patch was ever released (there seems to have been some sort of problem between the publisher and the developer) and the game is pretty much worthless these days (or it's at least worth a penny)...
Has anyone here actually played this game (i.e., got it to run at all) and if so, how the heck did you do it? At the moment, I really don't care if it's the worst game ever made - i just want to see and play for myself.
(over and out!)
g.

Strategy First was the publisher so I'm not surprised ... they have a very shady past about not paying royalties or wages due. I never heard of this game actually - it might be interesting to see if it's possible to get it going. Mobygames has screenshots, though, so it's very likely there was a working version. Seems the game was originally Polish too, just like GOG.

On sale at Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Vault-Pc/dp/B0001IPY2K
I will get it for myself at that price. Although I do not have an Amazon Account - Have to get my wife or one of the kids to buy it for me ;-)
Just placed the order and it was almost as much shipping as it was for the game. Says it runs under XP so I should be able to get it to work in vista. I will let you know. I do have Neverend (by the same company) I can load that up and see how it goes and let you know.

Ruh-Roh... I got a new copy for that penny and nope, it wouldn't run under XP at all. The game will install fine, BUT you get a DDRAW error when you try to start it up, as noted earlier. I tried a few things from rebooting to defragging and reinstalling without clicking the texture compiling thing that shows up post install, but no luck. I'm surprised the game is actually being sold on amazon at all.
then again, perhaps there's a fix I missed in my search for one...
If you somehow get it to run on Vista, that would indeed be interesting. If not, i hope you didn't overpay for it. Hell, SOMEONE out there needs to find a fix.
I first heard of it back around 2005 or so along with Neverend, Dawn of Magic and Invasion Earth when I was writing reviews for a site that's dead these days. SV looked intriguing, but I was only able to get builds of the other games. I'm thinking those MobyGames shots are from a preview build.
Go peek at metacritic's "scores" for the game. I didn't see any pro scores, only very disgruntled folks who bought the retail release and couldn't get it to run at all... there are two false 10's for the game, which is pretty darn funny (well, unless you own a copy of the game and paid full price for it!)
g.

Neverend loads and plays fine on my Vista 64 AMD Box - No problems whatsoever not even a disk check when playing the game. I will let you know about Shadow Vault in a few days when it arrives.

Keep me posted. I just lent Shadow Vault out to someone who's going to try running it on his XP, Vista and W7 systems at his shop this weekend. This should be interesting...
Neverend cracks me up - between the dialog and trying to get thirty feet without dying thanks to some insane random encounters with really strong enemies, the game does task you to actually enjoy it. At least there are some interesting adventure game elements here and there.
My review build has a hilarious "training" video portion where the voice actor for the lead character tries to be funny while walking through the game controls and combat. It sounds as if she's reading off cue cards with a water pistol to her head or something...

Got it today and installed it on my Vista 64 and got the same error. I installed it on an older XP Laptop and it runs fine with no problems. I did not load the Direct X during the install on my new machine as I am running 11 and it wants to load 9. Maybe a compatability issue with the newer version of Direct X.

Great to see you got it working! That DX issue is it, as I'm using DX 9.0c plus have a few Service Pack updates which may conflict with SV. I didn't install DX from the disc either, figuring the version I'm currently using would be fine. Guess it wasn't.
The plot thickens (as in how to get this to run without removing the version of Direct X i now use...)
g.

There was some mention of turning off AGP Texture Acceleration after running the DirectX Diagnostic Tool. Might want to give that a try.

I did yesterday. I own the Strategy First 2 CDs release, but the game is no more on their website, and there's no support at all. The game installed and runs fine on Windows XP. I had to do a simple tweak, as follows:
Try to change your DESKTOP resolution prior to start the game (try 1024x768 or 800x600) also try changing to 16/32 bit color depth.
But honestly, the game is not worth the hassle, nor a single penny expense. Shallow gameplay and very little tactical options, ugly and uninspired graphic art, history is pure nonsense and not interconnected. The game lasted about 5 minutes in my HD after I maneged to get it running.
Hope that helped you.

Did both of those (turned off AGP/DX Diag) when i first installed with no luck, but some digging since and see that it is a combination of a few things on my PC that are keeping the game from running. Still, I'll try Lobuno's suggestions this weekend and see if I can get it running (bad game or not, I have to at least win the battle of seeing how awful it is....)