Castle in the Darkness is an small-looking game about a knight exploring a castle and rescuing a princess. It starts off relatively weak but as you progress further some things become apparent to you. First, it is a lot bigger than it looks from the Steam page. And second, you have to love the core gameplay to tolerate this game. I don’t love it very much.
Exploriness
In the beginning the game is relatively on-rails, and in fact I would say most of the content is gated until you obtain the double jump. Not to be a spoiler-sport, but that is relatively late. However, once to game does open up, there’s a surprising amount of areas to explore that are optional. Explore might not be exact right word, actually, since the zones feel a little bit confined. There are larger areas and a few branching paths, but that is the exception.
Ultimately the exploration is unsatisfying. I have been trying to figure out why this game fails to feel like a metroidvania game even though it ostensibly meets all of the requirements. It’s most likely because it relies on the Castlevania model but leaves out some key elements. For example, there is a lack of items- since there are only key items with weapons and armor being rare, progression-based power-ups, it makes a lot of the joys of exploration pointless. When I go down a long corridor and the only reward is money(which is not used for much), you’re basically standing there with your whatever in your hand and then just kill yourself to go to the last checkpoint. Additionally, since enemies essentially only drop money, the sensation of killing enemies becomes synonymous with the steadily surfacing thought that picking up coins does not need a sound effect. There is also a lack of weapon variety for most of the game leaving little alternate ways to approach problems.
There is also no in-game map, perhaps the game’s most fatal metroidvania sin, and a strange system of warping that does not open up until too late in the game. With no map, that basically makes it an exercise in memorization or note-taking(*laugh track*) in order to actually experience the game as intended.
I was impressed with some of the care that went into the design, however. There are some complex secrets and locked doors and optional content that probably require a guide to complete 100 percent, and you can tell this game was not just thrown together.
Gameplay
The gameplay is a bastardization of standard I Wanna be the Guy fare and, I dunno, maybe Castlevania. Enemies do a lot of damage,there’s lots of spikes, and the platforming combines a small sprite with weird physics. The thing is, I wouldn’t say it is especially hard, but it is hard. Does that make sense.
The thing is, the way this game is designed, it seems to expect you to completely master the feel of the jumping and weapons in order to complete it. There is a margin of error, but it is thin. C’mon take me out to dinner first, game, I’m on the fence as it is. Don’t go messing this up by making me dodge bullets, poke a tiny sword, accomodate for wind, and do weird wimpy double jumps just to play the game.
I wanna say that it’s just personal preference though. My innate aversion to a game like this colors my opinion so I’m not sure if the level design is good or bad. And the spikes were not the worst part but they were not a good part.
So it goes without saying that the game design(map, objectives) was negatively impacted by the gameplay. As a result, unless you particularly like the gameplay, I doubt this game will work out for you. There are lots of positive reviews so there’s certainly a market for this type of game.
Style
The art and music are honestly pretty standard. I say that since this game came looks like it came out if 2009 but it was 2015. The indie retro thing has been going a while, so the boring enemies and repeated tile backgrounds come off as a bit lazy. However, the boss designs are pretty good. Also, I would not normally mention cutscenes in a game like this because I skip them, but I was unable to skip these and would like to say that they are bad and not funny.
There are lots of pop culture and video game references, though, which I normally don’t care for, but they managed to work here because of the, I guess, over-simplicity of its presentation. Mario thwomps, Vigo, and Arthur are a surprising breath of fresh air in the under-detailed environments.
There is an okay game somewhere in Castle in the Darkness, underneath the body of a knight who walked into spikes. No, he didn’t fall, his toe touched a spike and he died. No, the checkpoint was a while back.
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