Developer: OpenXcell Studio
Publisher: OpenXcell Studio
Platform: PC, Android
Tested on: PC
Mysterious Castle – Review
Puzzle games can really give you something to think about in between gaming sessions, great puzzle games fire off volleys of conundrums which keep your mind occupied. Mysterious Castle is a game perfect for the beginning puzzler. A short game can be fantastic, Portal is a perfect example of that. Mysterious Castle doesn’t quite reach that level of polish or narrative design.
Story
The story of Mysterious Castle is a short one and a rather implausible one at that. It all starts with a thief breaking into a place to steal some stuff. The logic is still within the game so far. He encounters a monk who asks him if the thief can save him. The thief declines. Still making quite some sense and this creates a character which is rather interesting. Then the monk tells the thief he’s been around for 20.000 years, looking for a gold skull so he can be freed. The thief doesn’t really care for anything but gold and things of great value. The skull will do quite well.
It’s when you’ve actually finished the game you’ll be thinking about how a monk couldn’t take out the time to find the skull and give it to the first person to enter the place. The writing is simple, but it does the trick somewhat. It’s just when you come to finale of the game that a glaring grammatical error undermines the story.
Graphics
The game has been developed in Unity. This is nothing to be scoffed at, Unity is a platform where beautiful things can be created. Mysterious Castle doesn’t really do much with it however. The environments are in 3D, and though the textures are simple and make the puzzles overseeable.
The cursor changes shape when you are able to click on objects and surfaces. The environments are small, and when you click on something you’ll be certain to find something that’ll further your search to the solution. There aren’t much different environments as all of them are indoors and you’ll traverse from one room to the next. Having a little more variety would have been nice. The game is available on Android and PC, so the graphical limitations aren’t just for fun, they are there so that it runs on most devices.
Sound
The soundtrack is a single track. This isn’t a demerit however. The track is ominous, and sets the mood just perfectly. You are constantly under pressure and thinking what is going to jump out at you and when. Mysterious Castle isn’t a game you should be playing with a headset however.
While the music is best with a headset, but the sound effects will kill your ears. There’s a loud tap whenever you click an item or a space on the screen. It creates a jumpscare the first time, but after that it just detracts from the overall immersion of the game. If you disable the effect it’ll improve the overall enjoyment of the game.
Gameplay
Mysterious Castle is an ‘escape room’ type of puzzler. By pointing and clicking you’ll find items and combine them to find the keys and unlock doors and chests. The game is really short. In under an hour you can finish it.
The puzzles are really easy and only once does the game throw you a curve ball. It’s likely that when developing the game, the developers didn’t get through their full pitch without the person listening being able to complete the game and still being able to repeat the pitch, word for word. Even with a game this simple the developers even add insult to injury by adding the solutions, the full solutions, not some cryptic message somewhere in the levels.
There are ten levels, the last one not really a level. It’s just one click and that’s it, the game is finished. Just before that though, Mysterious castle gives you a small taste of what the Unity engine can be used for. The camera swerves and for a second you’ll feel exhileration for what’s to come. But that’s too little too late.
Conclusion
Mysterious Castle isn’t worth it’s money. It’s short and easy, that in itself doesn’t mean a game isn’t worth it, but with the game being simplified even more with the developers even giving you the sollution to the puzzles. The story is interesting, yet not really well worked out. If you want to introduce someone to puzzle games you might want to give them this game to start with. Just tell them to judge the game by the content and not the story.
Mysterious Castle - Review,
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