A little over a year ago, I played what I thought was by far the worst game to ever grace the medium. Agony was a downright failure on every level, from the gameplay to the shoddy visuals; it was a complete train wreck that I thought I would never have to think about once I had completed my review. I’ve had some close contenders for broken games that made me want to shove needles into my eyes, but none that were as bad as that adventure into Hell… that is, until I booted up Castle Costume. 

You play as a young boy trying to salvage Halloween, which is being threatened by another kid who is salty that someone stole his sock. Yes, you read that right – someone stole his sock. The game is a throwback attempt at the platforming collect-a-thons that were popular in the PS1/N64 era that were ruled by Banjo Kazooie, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Spyro, and countless other heavyweights that have come and gone. In most cases, these games offered up huge open worlds that were littered with collectible items begging you to throw away countless hours seeking out each and every little secret before the days of achievements and trophies. This is Castle Costume’s biggest fault – boasting some of the smallest, rehashed open worlds I’ve seen in my life. The game contains a meager four worlds, each of which amounts to a single district in the Saint’s Row or GTA series.

The first level is essentially just that, a district from Saint’s Row, or what would appear to be an extremely early version of it, running on a PS1 off of a bootleg disc that was used to trick the system into playing a Dreamcast game instead of the other way around. Setting off through the city, you’re tasked with three basic objectives that are repeated on each of the settings, requiring you to collect candy, free a witch, and make your way through a portal to the next area. Along the way, you’ll have to dodge the occasional environmental hazard or takedown enemies using the barebones melee attacks at the disposal of your characters. This works fine, but it’s extremely boring due to the fact that most of the enemies fall after a single hit, and in most cases, you don’t even have to be within the range of them to actually make contact with the hitbox.

Since the combat is a bust you’d hope that the platforming would pose some sort of a challenge, and it does, but for all the wrong reasons. At regular intervals you’ll find portals that drop you into what looks like a blank space that has some hovering plates requiring you to jump from point A to point B and so forth, collecting items. The platforming fares no better than the combat thanks to the clunky controls and often poorly mapped bases that I found myself falling straight through more often than not despite landing dead center in the middle, only to have to restart the entire segment from the beginning.

The spooky, cartoonish character design suits the material well, but the environments are another story altogether – it appears the developers were only interested in creating the characters and NPCs, leaving the backdrops as an afterthought. The assets lack any proper detail, typically looking as if they were sloppily rendered using an MS Paint style, making exploration about as thrilling as traversing your front yard. I wish I could speak to the audio, but aside from a few sound effects that are broadcast at the volume of a whisper, the game is almost entirely silent.

There is almost no direction provided despite having a small map in the corner of the screen. I spent a good thirty minutes from the start climbing a green orb that was blocking my path from the objective that the map directed me towards, only to find out I had to complete the previous objective to move forward, which was nowhere to be found on the same map.

At the end of the day, Castle Costume is a game that struggles to fit into the box of a video game, seeming like a school project that was completed the night before the due date. Not only does it fail to evoke the same desire to collect each and every bit of junk tucked away within the corners of the game world, it lacks the “fun factor,” feeling more like a chore than anything.

1 out of 10

Pros

• The Cartoonish Halloween Theme

Cons

• Boring Gameplay
• Repeated, Poorly Textured Environments
• Lazy Combat
• Lacking Direction
• Broken Platforming

Castle Costume was developed and published by Loveridge Designs. It was released on NS and PS4. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. For more on Castle Costume, visit its official site

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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