Shadow of the Colossus, released in Japan as Wander and the Colossus,[a] is an action-adventure game developed by SCE Japan Studio and Team Ico, and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 2. The game was released in North America and Japan in October 2005 and PAL regions in February 2006.[1] It was directed by Fumito Ueda and developed at SCEI's International Production Studio 1, also known as Team Ico, the same development team responsible for the cult hit Ico,[2][3] to which the game is considered a spiritual successor.

The game's storyline focuses on a young man named Wander who enters a forbidden land. Wander must travel across a vast expanse on horseback and defeat sixteen massive beings, known simply as colossi,[4] in order to restore the life of a girl named Mono. The game is unusual within the action-adventure genre in that there are no towns or dungeons to explore, no characters with whom to interact, and no enemies to defeat other than the colossi.[5][6] Shadow of the Colossus has been described as a puzzle game, as each colossus can only be killed by attacking certain weak points which require specific actions to access