Castle In The Darkness

Fun. Challenging. And a love letter to classic NES games.

If you liked Super Metroid on SNES, you'll like this game. While it can be hard as nails with some jumps or bosses, none of it is impossible, and you can feel yourself get better each attempt. The same thing that you struggled with one hour in will be breezed through as you're hunting for yet more secrets.

El juego podía ser excelente, pero por una serie de cuestiones, se queda en muy bueno a secas. Los pinchos que causan muerte al instante es una decisión absurda. No tanto porque hagan insta-kill, sino porque están posicionados para molestar. No para causar un reto, están posicionados para hacer la vida del jugador más pesada. El 90% de mis muertes han sido por pinchos El mapa es excelente, lleno de secretos, pero los puntos de guardado son irregulares. Y que haya que recorrer muchas habitaciones desde el punto de partida hasta el boss, es mal diseño, por desgracia. El juego me ha gustado mucho, tiene muchos secretos, la dificultad sería la adecuada si no tuviera los pinchos, pero ese par de detalles hacen que muchas veces te desesperes. Si te gustan los plataformas / metroidvanias, es un muy buen juego.

"Mostly Positive" is crazy to me. This game is so good. It doesn't hide what kind of a game it is at all, and it takes the premise and knocks it out of the park. The controls are snappy. The bosses are fun. The level design is unique, challenging, and rewarding. You might die a lot, (I did), but the game is built around that so you 1. don't lose progress, collectables, or money on death and 2. have frequent checkpoints, especially near the bosses. There are games where frequent deaths can be incredibly frustrating and then there are games that know how to work around that so when you die all you want to do is keep playing and try that boss/platforming challenge again. This was a collaborative project by two amazing developers, 1. the dev behind The Binding of Isaac and 2. the developer of Astalon and it totally feels like a crazy weird/awesome hybrid. I prefer more action/platforming than Astalon has personally and this game has tons of both. It takes the best of both worlds from those game and creates an amazing metroidvania. EDIT: Wanted to touch on something I saw in the negative reviews - Literally not once during this game did I feel like I needed a map. People complainin…

Pretty neat little game! I came back and played this after having played Astalon and Lovish, more recent games by Matt Kap, and this one is a lot less refined in comparison, but you can see the design philosophy here that would eventually evolve into those games. There's a lot of secrets to find, some pretty well-designed puzzle platforming, and combat feels good. The Metroidvania elements are a bit light; progression through the game is pretty linear, and every area has a few secrets and branching areas that you'll have to come back to after you have a later powerup, but it's not a huge maze. It's got a pretty catchy soundtrack, too, although I feel like all of the really good tracks got saved for later areas and the beginning of the game is a little underwhelming. Also, be aware that this is a tough game. It pays homage to a lot of NES classics, and it definitely aims to be as challenging as some of them were. My biggest criticism would be an overreliance on instant death spikes; they often feel like they're just sprinkled everywhere. They're on floors, falling from ceilings, and even moving around platforms. Occasionally these are used in well-designed platforming sections tha…

Nice and simple Metroidvania. Instant death to spikes can be brutal but the quick respawn and frequent checkpoints make up for it. Overall it's a good time