The Castle

By: Kirk Hiner

Genre: Adventure

Format: CD

Developer: Blue Line Studios

Publisher: Blue Line Studios

System Requirements: MacOS 7, 68020 processor, 8MB RAM, 640x480 monitor at 256 colors, 4X CD-ROM

Network Feature: No

3Dfx Support: No

Retail Price: $29.95

Availability: Out Now

Must...fight...urge...

Have to...be...strong...

Can't...compare to...Myst...

Not all...adventure...games are...like...like...ah, screw it. The Castle is like Myst.

There, I said it. I'm sorry. My apologies to Daniel Kueng of Blue Line Studios who deserves better. My apologies to my readers who deserve better. My apologies to the Miller boys who deserve to be flogged for making Riven. But every time an adventure game is released, whether it be created with HyperCard, SuperCard, tarot cards or whatever, reviewers inevitably make that most evil of comparisons. There was a period of time where every box on the shelves at Egghead boldly stated, "Better than Myst" followed by the name of some magazine of which even the publisher had never heard.

I'm guilty of it myself because it makes my job easier. People know Myst, so I can make the comparison and therefore save three or four descriptory paragraphs that can instead be used to argue why "descriptory" should be a word.

So yeah, The Castle does have elements of Myst in it; indeed, at times it seems to parody it. But when I finished Myst, I thought, "Well there's a game that's about as good as an adventure can get." When I finished The Castle, I thought, "Well, good. Now I never have to experiment with LSD."

I should first note that The Castle is pretty much Daniel Kueng's baby; he did practically all the work on the game, much like the Millers did with Myst. Call me sentimental, but that always makes me enjoy a game more. I can appreciate the heart that goes into it much more on this level than I can with...oh...say, Falcon 4.0 which had fifty beta testers! When it's one person's vision, I'm much more interested in seeing where it goes.

So where does The Castle go? Straight to Freakyville.

But before we go there, a couple of cool features deserve to be mentioned. First is the Hint Box, which comes with the game. If you're stuck, you can quit the game and launch the Hint Box which will provide you a series of clues, insulting you all the while, until you either cry to your mother or learn enough to proceed. The Castle can also automatically save your game when you quit, bringing you back to that exact spot when you continue without your having to restore. This tremendously speeds up the launching process so you don't feel bad about quitting so often to access the Hint Box. There did seem to be a bug in that I couldn't access the preferences from within the game; hitting Command + Spacebar as the game instructs did nothing, and clicking at the top near the menu bar returned me to the finder.

Okay, The Castle starts out innocently enough. You're outside the fence of a castle, strangely enough, albeit a rather small one. Hidden rooms and passageways aside, the castle has about ten rooms. The interior is decorated more like a mediocre mansion, and the outside recalls miniature golf courses moreso than the hills of majestic North Wales (or Switzerland, where Blue Line is located). That's not to say the game isn't attractive. On the contrary, the graphics are richly colored and nicely detailed. The Castle is quite fun to look at, and equally enjoyable to hear. The ambient noises are extremely well done, especially the crunching of stones or creaking of wood as you walk.

After exploring a bit, you eventually find a diary with most of the pages torn out. To complete the game, you have to find the pages of the diary that are scattered about the grounds. Sound familiar? But unlike in Myst, these pages don't play movies. They simply tell the story from the point of Noemi, a woman who, like you, found herself suddenly trapped in this world. But unlike you, she also found herself in the company of Brad and Rod. Brad, whom she loves, and Rod, who loves her. As the diary gives clues to solve the puzzles, it also reveals bits of the love triangle between these three.

It's this story that is going to make or break The Castle for most players. At first I was put off by the goofy dialogue and soap opera plot. "Thank Heavens I'm here alone," I kept thinking, as I'd surely slap these characters six ways to Sunday if I had to listen to them. They were so annoying and juvenile that I kept expecting one of them to kick Puck out of the house.

But after picking up on Daniel Kueng's sense of humor in his e-mails to me, I developed a different attitude towards the game. I started to take it less seriously, and then it became goofy fun. I can compare it to Flash Gordon or Mars Attacks; if you see either of those movies expecting Dune-like epic science fiction (the book, not the movie, of course), you're in for a major let-down. But if you take them for the simple excursions that they are, then they're wildly entertaining. Now The Castle didn't entertain me quite as much as Tom Jones' performance in Mars Attacks, but in all fairness, what could?

There are mainly two types of puzzles in The Castle; brain teasers and environment manipulation. Both are mainly used to block access to other areas, and for most you need to have acquired the proper number of diary pages to get the clues. This is helpful in that you can't get too far ahead of the plot, but annoying as you end up spending far too much time searching the grounds for more pages. There's not a lot of ground to search, but some pages can only be seen when facing a certain direction while others only appear at certain times (day vs. night, which you can control, or after solving other puzzles). As a result, you have to search the same areas a few times to find everything you need. And it's never really explained who tore all the pages out of the diary and scattered them about in the first place.

As the plot moves along and you get deeper into the hidden areas of the castle, things just get weird. If, like me, you're into weird, then the game also gets more entertaining. The more absurd the relationship between Noemi, Brad and Rod, the better it got. Because the whole story is revealed from Noemi's point of view, it sort of has that whole Titanic romance thing going on. In fact, Noemi even has her portrait painted in the buff, which you can see if you search hard enough. Come to think of it, I don't recall any pictures of Noemi where she was wearing much more than a nightie. I don't know...I think Myst could've been improved by a few scantilly clad women flitting around the Island.

And just when I was sure I figured out where the story was going, suddenly people are dying and oracles are speaking to me and we're entering parallel universes and someone please stop it it's all too much to take!

I'm not sure at what point it happens, but The Castle quickly gives in to its excess. Right down to the last moments when the villian's evil plot is revealed, the game builds to a wonderfully overwritten gothic horror finale. In today's gaming market that takes itself way too seriously, I found The Castle to be quite refreshing. Its puzzles will please fans of The 7th Guest (actually, its puzzles will seem very familiar to fans of The 7th Guest) and its exploratory nature will please those looking to immerse themselves in another world...even if that world doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Raised on Intellivision and "Tron," Kirk Hiner has been an avid gamer ever since he was tall enough to look through the viewfinder on the Battlezone upright. Although he makes a living designing websites for Dynamics Online, Inc., Kirk spends all the free time his fiancee allows him playing games on his G4/450 or 3400c. Most other times he can either be found working on his next "never to be published" novel, rereading anything by Kurt Vonnegut or watching RAW is WAR.

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May 26, 2012