Costume Quest – The Fridge Reviews

Developer: Double Fine Production
Publisher: Double Fine Production
Rrp: £6.99 (or £6.69 on gog.com)
Released: 14th October 2011
Available on Steam, gog.com and their own website
Played using: Xbox 360 Control Pad

It’s Halloween and your dressed to impress… Or scare, whatever’s your bag. Your sibling however, they’re dressed like a candy corn. But while you’re out trick or treating your sibling gets kidnapped by a monster! Worse still it took all your candy! Now you need to go and save your candy and that annoying wretch too.
Welcome to Costume Quest, you play Wren (the sister) or Reynold (the brother), depending on who you choose at the beginning. Your choice makes no difference to the way the game plays other than some very slight changes in dialog. Costume Quest is a light RPG / Adventure game, allowing the player to wander the open areas in a style somewhat similar to the Zelda game series, completing quests and getting into fights.

As you play you’ll gain costumes, each of which has different strengths and abilities. Some will be better at offence while others are more suited to a support role. Some of these abilities are not always solely useful in combat and can be used during your travels. Part of the fun of this game is seeing how the powers of each costume gel with the others in combat. You also have to love the idea that a robot, a knight and the Statue of Liberty can fight together.

Some costumes will come to you fully formed but more often you will be required to find the blueprints first then gather the materials to create it. These blueprints and materials can be found in a lot of places, sometimes as part of a quest but generally they are found in coffins that are scattered around the levels.

When you enter combat you will find that it is turned based. Once you are in combat you are given three choice of actions to perform, a basic attack (being X on a control pad), a special power (being Y) and using an item (B). Each action will use up your turn and move it to the next member of your party.
When you do attack you are given a prompt to perform an action, for example; as the robot you perform a basic attack once the attack is launched you must press X in the right spot of a bar to land a good hit. It’s not always that particular QTE (Quick Time Event) or even button that must be performed but there is always some QTE. You can also defend yourself against attack by performing a well timed QTE when prompted, though success will lessen the blow rather than stop it.
Every costume has a special power that takes three turns to fill up, these special powers can be anything from attacks to mass healing spells. Special actions don’t require a QTE to be performed.
Once combat is over all of your parties members will have their health restore back to full allowing you to just jump straight back into the fray.

Being a RPG (albeit a silly one) you have a small degree of character customisation and as the games name implies there are quests to complete. All of these things, including what collectibles you’ve attained, are found in your notebook which is the Y button on my controller. The customisation I spoke of is deciding what Battle Stamps to apply to your party members. These stamps add effects to the party member it’s applied to like “increased attack power” or “counterattack upon a successful defend”, of course only one can be applied to a party member at a time. This notebook also allows you to read up on the strengths and abilities of the completed costumes you have.

As I mentioned earlier when you’re not in combat you get to explore a decently sized open area… Actually as you progress through the story it becomes a few open areas. These area’s have lots of candy to collect, be that through just picking it up, by hitting objects or trick or treating. You may wonder what purpose the candy plays in this game. Well it acts as a currency, you spend it to acquire Battle Stamps (which also mentioned earlier).
Each area has a bobbing for apples mini-game that will give you a reward should you win, you can play up to three times in each area. The last time giving you the biggest reward.
Oh, that trick or treating thing? It’s a bit of a risk, sometimes you’ll get candy, sometimes you’ll get a monster and you end up in a fight. Of course you can’t avoid trick or treating, you have to do it to every house in order to progress to the next area.

Costume Quest includes a built in expansion called ‘Grubbin’s on Ice’ (that’s the name of the monsters by the way) this a short campaign set after the story of the main game. I found it a little more challenging than the main campaign. The campaign introduces a new main adversary, a few new enemies to fight and some new costumes to wear. I feel it’s little touches like this that can make a game go from decent to great and this is certainly no exception.

As you can see by the screenshots, it has a cel shaded, cartoony aesthetic. This really works well with the autumn colour scheme and makes the whole game feeling very lighthearted. The dialog is pretty funny as well, it lacks any voice acting opting for characters to speak via text bubbles. It has loads of humour moments, from little comments by the NPC’s whe you speak with them, to the various cutscenes. Seriously, take the time to actually read what’s being said, I promise you won’t be disappointed.