Tomorrow (13 August 2020) it will be released Darkestville Castle on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. The graphic adventure of Epic LLama e Buka Entertainment it was appreciated with some reservations by users and critics during its militancy on the PC that began almost three years ago, but this second publication is preparing to give a new life (literally?) to this particular point and click. It is a work that is inspired in style and type of comedy by the classic adventures of Lucas Arts, but does not disdain some obvious references, easter eggs and quotes to big names in the world of video games in general (from Super Mario to Pac Man , up to a veiled reference to Bloodborne). The adventure is not particularly long-lived, especially for those who are navigated in the genre, however there are some small puzzles that at least proved to be interesting and that took time to solve. We emphasize that the length of the game is in full proportion to its current price.
Soon!
Like any self-respecting demon, the young man Cid he spends his time, ever since he was a child, terrorizing and making the people's lives peaceful Darkestville a real hell. His misdeeds are now a regular for the population, and above all the daredevil (and at the same time clumsy, gullible, and a lot of other not exactly positive stuff) Dan Teapot has always tried to put a spoke in the wheel to get Darkestville back to sleep peacefully. However, it seems that this time around he has a foolproof plan… and even if it doesn't go quite as he imagined, our demonic Cid will find himself having to deal with a much more complicated situation than expected.
Without going further on the (dis) adventures narrated, let's analyze the game in its dynamic parts. The adventure stands as a classic point and click, which for the occasion has been adapted to the best on consoles so as not to regret the mouse and keyboard. Of the upcoming releases, we had the opportunity to test the one concerning Nintendo Switch, and we can say that, although the comfort of the aforementioned peripherals is not reachable, the adaptation was really excellent. From the sacrosanct possibility to increase and adjust the cursor speed at will, to the use of the side keys (whether using pad, joy-con or portable mode) to individually scroll through the objects in the inventory, up to the implementation of touch screen functions , which in some stages make everything much more immediate.
Gift Played
If there's one thing the guys at Epic LLama can be proud of, it's that Darkestville Castle is an enjoyable game, offering a good dose of humor to the user, only occasionally falling into predictable clichés. It is very strong there quotation charge within the game, not only for various allusions, such as that of the "plumbers" or the "blue disease" of ghosts, but also for the comic style used and for a couple of structural choices: in fact, the reference to Monkey Island 2, with Cid who with his inventiveness and that pinch of sadism cannot fail to remember Guybrush Threepwood, but above all with the final showtime which (avoiding spoilers) is clearly structured as the final battle between Guybrush and the ghost pirate Le Chuck. Very welcome the demolition of the fourth wall in some situations, punctual, never too forced or out of place.
The proposed puzzles are never extremely complicated, except for a couple of interesting situations, but above all given the bizarre solutions, the players will be pushed to a sort of try and error… Which in many cases can even hit the mark, given that the number of scenarios that can be reached at the same time will always be a maximum of 5, and with a very small number of elements to interact with. A real shame, because except in rare cases this dampens the enthusiasm for the discovery and the solving of the puzzles. The feeling is that the game wanted / could tell even more, but that it was truncated in some of its parts, with some bound backdrops to be almost only fillers with a couple of important elements, and a few characters besides the main ones to act as mere extras.
Where is the library from?
On an artistic level, this re-proposition of Darkestville Castle is promoted, but once again with reservations. Graphically the game stands up to the comparison with the genre, making us breathe deeply the comic and pseudo horror air that the authors had in mind, arm in arm with a very good sound sector and English dubbing. The reservations, however, concern the localization: Darkestville Castle is entirely translated into Spanish (which is very welcome given the fair amount of text you can come across), but in some cases the translation was totally flopped... from bamboo cane to toothpick is an instant, as well as from an undefined plant mistaken for a pair of "strange pants". Furthermore, the proposed text is undermined by several misprints like missing or wrong letters, which at times almost mislead us from the meaning of the sentence.
