Night Castle

Looking past the primitive pixel art and some minor jank reveals Night Castle to be a wildly inventive Metroidvania. It’s greatest strength is sure to be its most polarizing: a 30-day time limit to your exploration. I hope that, like Pikmin 1 before it, Night Castle highlights the advantages of strict time limits over the time loop approach. Actions never feel consequential in the latter and the periodic interruptions necessitated by them clash with the uninterrupted appeal of games that don’t hang a clock over the player’s head. Just pick one or the other because I don’t see either side being fully satisfied with a compromise. Now, I will concede Night Castle’s time limit is very generous. I reached the credits on day 18 and collected almost every item. I would’ve liked less leniency here, but I don’t think that’s a reason to dismiss the system as a failure. Everyone has a different tolerance for in-game timers and there are plenty of other stressors to deal with. For example, you can’t save whenever you feel like, only at a handful of designated chapels. The innkeeper offers two options: stay or rest. Resting at the inn lets you restore health and save your progress at the cur…

Innovative day/night system, when they say get back to the sanctuary before sunset they mean it. There's even this humongous dark knight who appears at midnight to hunt you down, and your character is like one inch tall and he takes up the whole screen and just clobbers you. It's like the size difference between Golbez and Cecil in Final Fantasy 2 during the doll fight in the Dwarven underground castle.

Very nice metroidvania, with loads of personality and unique design ideas.

fun concept. good game.

Totally recommended! I have just started playing and I can feel this is going to be a great adventure. Reminds me of Astalon and Pampas & Selene, which is great! Although, it has its own personality, and I appreciate it. Gotta say, I don't know if the game overall is kind of slow because it is that way, or I'm having trouble running it. Being that I didn't run on issues, combat is tight and animations go fluidly, I believe it's meant to be. I am truly amazed of what a single developer can achieve, having its own style, ideas and topics for it! Thanks for a great game, and all the cake it includes (wink wink) LOL I hope to keep seeing more from the developer in the future, godspeed!

Pretty fun and challenging game. The day/night cycle and 30 day limit work well together to provide tension throughout the game. It encourages you to plan out your routing and optimize accomplishing what you need to do on that day, such as unlocking a door or getting an item, while still getting enough souls to level up yourself or weapons/bibles. The combat is simple but enjoyable. The weapons movesets are simple but all distinct from one another, so they all had situations they were best in, and I swapped weapons a good amount. The only exception is the second weapon, the big sword that I can't remember the name of. I found it to be pretty bad. Despite doing more damage per swing than the starter sword, it swung less often and therefore has lower DPS. It also doesn't provide a defense bonus like the starter sword, which I found to be incredibly important. The bibles were also fun to use and offered unique benefits over standard weapons. It was fairly polished and bug-free as well. The only things I noticed were that during a small cutscene that moves the camera, such as when hitting a switch to open a door in another room, the game is paused but you can press the menu butto…