Castle of the Winds

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Castle of the Winds is a computer role-playing game with a traditional fantasy theme developed by SaadaSoft and published by Epic MegaGames for Windows 3 in 1993. The game uses a traditional dungeon-crawler style, but utilizes the drag-and-drop icon interface of Windows.

When my parents visited someone's house with me in tow, I remember seeing this game being played by their son. Although I recognized immediately that the game was hugely media challenged (the SNES had already been out for years), I was still intrigued by the simple interface. Years later, I remember seeing icons from the game in a free icon collection, and, later still in the mid-2000s, I remembered the game and found a shareware copy online. I only played a little bit and died early in the game, so I didn't put much effort into it. When I began working on reviews for this Web site, I decided to give the game another try and played it with more earnest.

Status

The game has been released as freeware. I have not beaten it.

Review

Good

  • Although it's all text, the game is well-scripted.
  • It's kind of cool that the game lets you rename all of your items.

Bad

  • Having to use the keypad for movement is uncomfortable, and using diagonal movement on a square grid is always problematic. The designer should have either eliminated diagonal movement or switched to a hex grid.
  • The game features pointless and cursed items that require you to waste either money or mana on identification or remove curse spells. This isn't fun, it just slows down the game.
  • The game completely lacks sound and music. One of the benefits of Windows was the compatibility of audio devices, which should have lead to more music and sound, and sound cards had been out for years at this time. It just wasn't acceptable.

Ugly

  • Undead enemies cause permanent stat loss, which, unless you enjoy making the game much harder for yourself, requires you to reload each time you're hit.
  • The graphics are terrible. I understand that Windows 3 had a limited color palette, and the game only uses 32x32 icons for everything, but a skilled artist would have made the game much more interesting to look at. There isn't any animation either.

Links

Link-MobyGames.png  Link-Wikipedia.png