Developer: Gunnar Games
Publisher: Viva Media, GameMill
Rrp: £6.99 (Steam), £7.70 (Bigfishgames.com)
Released: 9th July 2013
Available on Steam and Big Fish Games
Played using: Mouse and keyboard
Off the back of the moderately successful TV series Castle comes the game Castle: Never Judge a Book by its Cover.
For those who are unaware, Castle is a series about an author (Richard Castle, played by Nathan Fillion) who follows and assists the police in solving murders. I’ll admit I like the show, I find it both funny and it’s fun to try and solve the murders before the police do, but I’ll try not to let that influence my review.
Like most point and click adventures, be they of the Monkey Island or the Hidden Object variety, there is a aspect of what I can only call “game logic”. What I mean by this is that only a certain item can be used with another even though you clearly have items that would fit the bill in your possession.
Backtracking is something you’ll do a lot of in this game, an item found in one area may have to be used in another.
Hovering the cursor over an item that you can interact with causes it to change. If it becomes a hand that will place the item into your inventory. A spy glass shows a area you can zoom in on, and finally set of footprints indicate where you can change between scenes.
If you are playing on rookie difficulty you will see sparkles over certain objects that indicate a puzzle to solve or hidden object game to perform.
As you start the game you are given a choice of two difficulty options, rookie and
veteran. The rookie difficulty highlights active areas while veteran removes the highlights and slows the recharge rate of the hint and skip buttons.
When in a hidden object section you can choose between how the having the objects you need to find are displayed, either as a list or as a series of silhouettes.
Some objects within the section need to be interacted with to create an object you seek. For example to find the sharpened pencil you need to locate the pencil sharpener an use a pencil hidden within the scene on it.
At the beginning of each chapter the story is told via a mildly animated storyboard, once this is concluded the chapter proper begins. The dialog is written, which I feel is a shame as the Castle license lends itself well to this style of game and having the character actually speak would have really improved the immersion of this game.
One off putting thing I found with this game is the drawings of the various characters. They tend to reside within the uncanny valley, there’s something slightly off putting about the way they look.
In honesty… This game at full price is way too expensive. The game lasts about six hours and there really isn’t any replay value in it, and I couldn’t recommend getting it at the Rrp.
If you liked that then perhaps try;
The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav
Tiny Bang Story
Full Throttle
