Developer: Llama industries
Publisher: Buka Entertainment
Platforms: PC
Tested on: PC
Darkestville Castle – Review
Who doesn’t remember spending hours on marvelous point-and-click adventures on game websites? These were the marvelous games that piqued our interest in the video game world and shaped us into the fervent gamers that we are today, Darkestville Castle, developed by Llama Industries and published by Buka Entertainment, is in this aspect a new classic. An adventure that is quite humorous and doesn’t take itself too seriously, with a lovable protagonist to root for while you experience his journey through this exciting episode in his life.
Story
We follow the adventurous and evil life of Cid, the demon of Darkestville. Cid’s life was simple: from the moment he fell from the skies as a baby, he planned on making the lives of everyone in Darkestville miserable. He succeeded in this, although his “great deeds of evil” were just pranks taken to a higher level, like placing an explosive charge on a bench in the park. Cid’s life went smoothly until his arch enemy, Dan Teapot, hired a group of demon hunters, called the Romero brothers, to hunt Cid down. This is when Cid’s life takes an interesting turn and he finds himself in a pickle, but not entirely because of the Romero brothers
Without going into any spoilers, the storyline develops in a good and sometimes unexpected way, but sometimes you do see plot points coming from a mile away. Making up for this are the awesome dialogue options that you have when talking to people and the overall character of Cid, for instance: when you click on the option to tell a lady she’s pretty, Cid just begins to chuckle embarrassedly while this lady looks at you like some kind of weirdo for just suddenly beginning to laugh in front of her.
Graphics
Darkestville Castle handles a cartoony style that fits excellently into the humorous atmosphere of the game, and to top it off, everything is hand drawn. Reminiscent of big classics such as Monkey Island and Day Of The Tentacle, this game’s graphics add to the old-school vibe it was already giving off. The character designs are simple and sometimes a bit childish, but in a good way.
A downside to the graphics is that the animations are quite general most of the time, if you give a character an object, it is mostly always the same animation which is sad because it would be a lot of fun if each item had its separate animation. Cid also walks a bit funny, but hey he’s a demon so that might just be the way demons of his kind walk, right?
Sound
Typical for games of this genre is that there is an ambient track in the background of each region as to not make it feel empty and boring, such is also the case with Darkestville Castle. Other than this ambient music, there is also the main theme which you hear in the menu and when looking at the world map. This theme reminds of numerous tracks from the score of the film Edward Scissorhands, composed by Danny Elfman.
Another great feat that this game possesses is excellent voice acting, it’s one of the things why you’ll adore this game and definitely fall in love with it. The developers can write all the funny lines they want for their characters, but if you have bad voice actors, they’ll never get through to the players. Lucky enough for us though, Llama Industries knew what they were doing and cast the right people for the job, Cid’s voice acting gives so much life to the character that you can only applaud the voice actor behind it, sir if you’re reading this, well done.
Gameplay
As a new iteration of the point-and-click adventure game genre, Darkestville Castle kept the classic gameplay elements: different regions, item gathering, puzzles and a lot of pointing and clicking. As awesome as the game’s atmosphere is, the gameplay is that of a point-and-click adventure and we’ve seen it countless times before, it’s the same old goat but with a different coat on. Llama Industries present no new mechanics whatsoever, they just revisited the genre and blew new life into it again. While this game brings nothing new, it is very nostalgic to play because of all the good memories most people have with point-and-click adventures, what Darkestville Castle brings is an old-school game with an atmosphere like no other.
Point-and-click adventures work as follows: you are presented with a problem for which you need something to solve it, for example: a hat. You then search for a way to get the hat and once you have it you can solve the problem you were faced with. As the game doesn’t hold your hand you’ll be wandering the map looking for solutions a lot, trying every item in your inventory on everything in your surroundings.
Conclusion
Darkestville Castle brings nothing new but revisits the genre and in doing so, attracts a whole group of gamers that have fond memories of this point-and-click adventure genre. Even though nothing new is introduced, Darkestville Castle is still worth your while because of the Tim Burton-esque gallows humor and the overall humorous atmosphere of the game, worth a try at least.
Darkestville Castle – Review,
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