Castle of no Escape

It's not that bad. Yeah, it looks old, but the game is over a decade old so what do you expect. Nothing special, nothing amazing, but it’s free and a neat little game to kill some time with.

Castle of no Escape is a compact retro dungeon crawler built around exploration, unpredictable encounters, character statistics, curses, artifacts, and a considerable amount of risk management. Developed by Xitilon and Esdeer and published by Xitilon, the game intentionally resembles an adventure from the early days of computer role-playing games. Its pixel-heavy presentation and straightforward controls make it appear extremely simple, but underneath that minimal exterior is a surprisingly unforgiving system where a poor decision, an unfortunate curse, or a dangerous enemy can quickly bring a promising run to an end. The adventure sends the player into a mysterious castle filled with monsters and interactive objects. Rather than presenting a lengthy campaign with extensive dialogue and scripted quests, it focuses almost entirely on surviving exploration and eventually overcoming the main threat lurking within the dungeon. Rooms can contain treasure, books, pools, merchants, magical objects, enemies, and passages to other areas. The castle therefore becomes a collection of small decisions in which curiosity can produce a useful reward just as easily as another problem. Players ca…

Castle of no Escape is a strange little retro dungeon crawler that I found much more interesting than I expected. The whole game is built around exploring a mysterious castle filled with monsters, treasures, curses and secrets, with the rather amusing twist that I am not actually allowed to leave. The idea is simple, but the procedural layout and constant danger give the exploration a nice sense of uncertainty. The exploration is probably my favourite part. Every room can contain something useful, dangerous or completely unexpected, so I have to pay attention while moving through the castle. I can find treasures that help protect me from different curses, and I have to decide when it is worth taking a risk to investigate another room. I liked that feeling of never being completely sure what I would find next. The combat is quite basic, but there is more strategy involved than the simple retro presentation initially suggests. My character has Strength, Intelligence and Dexterity, and letting any of these drop too far can end the run. I also have spells such as Web and Fireball, while the unusual IQ spell can instantly defeat an enemy if its intelligence is lower than mine. I enjoy…

Castle keeps me forever, I am pixel hells happy hostage. Bugs feed me hope, do not fix, I enjoy the pain buffet.

Very Simple, Very Fun, Very Short

The game only tells you the XBOX controls, so after about 20 minutes of experimenting and you then know which buttons does what and how the damage system works, you'll just walk around, never looking at the actual map and just react to what you meet before pulling up on the boss and winning. It was a neat little 50 minutes... but most of the enjoyment is just learning the mechanics and then steamroll the enemies before putting down the game. Oh and the constant achievements rolling in. It's free now, so it's mostly just a thumbs up for having been a neat little time spender. ( also you get a little wizard in the point shop )