Castle Adventure
Castle Adventure is a text-based action-adventure game designed by Kevin Bales for DOS and released in 1984 under a pay-what-you-feel model. It owes a lot of it's display to Rouge.
I first played a hacked version of the game released by Keypunch Software in the shovelware title, Swords and Sorcery. They re-titled the game "Golden Wombat," to try and confused buyers into thinking they were getting the Infocom game, The Golden Wombat of Destiny. My cousin had the game, and we did quite well at it, but the hacked copy did not include the game's documentation, so we were missing some of the commands and missed key items. I remember my cousin called the ugly ogre and "ugly orgy," which caused my older brother to laugh, though my cousin and I didn't know why at the time. Finally, a friend of my cousin's, who had the real Castle Adventure game, told my cousin how to find the other items, and he beat the game. I played it later myself and also beat the game.
When I was younger, I spent a fair amount of time hacking the Castle Adventure data files and tried multiple times to recreate the game in Quick Basic, but I always got bored with my attempts.
Status
I have beaten Castle Adventure, though not with a perfect score.
Review
- Overall: 3/10
- Best Version: DOS
Good
- The game has some interesting character to it. The room descriptions are a nice touch, there are some jokes, and the parser makes the game feel more interactive than a typical rouge-like.
Bad
- The story is lame.
- There are a few bugs and typos in the game.
- Even with the text parser, there just isn't very much to do in the game. A first-time player can beat it in an hour or so.
- The overly-simplified combat hurts the game.
Ugly
- Without a frame limiter, it's impossible to beat the game on a PC that's even a little faster than what the game was designed for.
Links
- mobygames.com/game/dos/castle-adventure - MobyGames.
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Adventure - Wikipedia.
- thealmightyguru.com/Reviews/CastleAdventure/Index.html - My old site.
