Developer: DevilishGames
Publisher: DevilishGames
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
King Lucas – Review
DevilishGames tried to create an unique game with King Lucas. Making the whole game be in one single castle that just keeps changing is surely creative and unique enough. Together with a stylish look and an appealing soundtrack this platformer has a lot of potential. Unfortunately this potential isn’t enough to make a mind blowing game. King Lucas, as fun as it is, probably won’t be a game that will stay for you.
Story
King Lucas’ story is pretty simple and barely existent. King Lucas’ wife left him after he had an affair with a witch. His daughters however seem to be lost in a ever changing castle. He had sent countless brave knights in the castle but none of them ever returned. You, the player, walks into King Lucas and also gets send on the quest to return his daughters to him. While you actually don’t want to take on this quest King Lucas doesn’t give you a chance to say no. So with reluctance you start your quest to find King Lucas his daughers. While this is a unique storyline it’s also a simple storyline. It never gets deep or feels like a real epic story. It’s simple, it’s fun, but that’s it.
Graphics
Simple graphics can be amazing graphics and this is really something King Lucas proves. The 2D characters and monsters stand amazingly in the 3D castle. The castle itself is also very stylish. Every room is different, giving you the feel you’re playing a game with an immensely amount of levels. The characters and monsters look simple and at times cute even, but just like the castle they are designed in a stylish way. Together with the smooth movements and the constant high framerates that this game runs in it’s a pleasure to look at.
Sound
While playing King Lucas you are accompanied with a nice and appealing soundtrack. It’s nothing too special, but it does add to the game and it’s vibe. Something that really stood out though was that whenever you dive under water the sound gets somewhat muffled. Things like this do give the game an extra layer of depth. The sound is clearly something the developers paid a lot of attention for.
Gameplay
The game is clearly a platform game. You move through the castle rooms by jumping from platform to platform or by fighting its various monsters. The controls are pretty straight forward. You can walk left and right, jump up, and climb up and down. Just like almost any 2D game it doesn’t really get more than that. The puzzles and platform don’t demand anything else from you too. The levels never get too hard and more than often the reason you died is because you misjudged the distance between you and a moving platform. Most rooms are fun, but they are never really challenging. Some times you will find locked doors. These you can open with keys you find, or buy. However the keys cost 30 gold and you will never find more than 10 gold behind a door, so it’s not really worthy buying them. You might also need to unlock a door to actually save a princess, so in many cases it’s better to just hold on to those keys.
Like its controls and puzzles the battle system is very straightforward and basic too. More basic and barebones even, as it’s all according one principle: You hit. There are no complicated battle mechanics, just you hitting and you being hit. The monsters you fight against don’t add much more layers to that battle system either. They hit or they shoot, but in most cases if you keep hitting them fast enough they can’t even attack you. This makes every fight more a task than a real fight after a while.
It clearly aren’t the battles and platform puzzles that make the game unique. No, the thing that makes the game unique is the castle itself. Every time you save a princess, a bigger part of the castle gets available for you, but that’s not all as the castle rooms completely moved and shifted. Meaning that while you maybe knew your way around before, you won’t know it anymore. In the beginning this is a really cool addition to the game, but once you unlocked the full 1000 rooms castle it gets quite annoying to find your away around the castle. Especially because the map in the game is extremely clunky (just like all menus actually) and a hassle to use. The latter could have been avoided by making the map a mini-map you can actually see in-game.
You can buy a compass from witches that you will see in random rooms from time to time. These compasses guide you to the right direction you need to go to find the princess. However these compasses break down after a couple minutes. Which makes them later in the game quite useless. There are also a lot of other items and weapons you can buy from the witches, but also the blacksmiths (who you also run into on random rooms), but every item will break down after a couple uses.
There is an online mode in King Lucas, but we couldn’t test this because there are no online players to be found. We tried multiple times, but never saw someone else online.
Conclusion
King Lucas is fun, but it never really gets more than that. Especially because of the lack of depth in both the storyline and gameplay it’s not a game that you will make an afternoon free to just play the game. It’s more a game you play when you’re bored. This is a shame since the concept of the changing castle is quite unique and could’ve been so much more.
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[…] we already did a review of King Lucas in 2016 for PC, this is the review for the Switch as it got its own release, as many (older) PC games get ported […]