There are many point-and-click adventure games on the market. Some of them are fantastic experiences, like Broken Age, while others aren’t so wonderful. Mysterious Castle is a PC-only point-and-click game in the popular style of flash “Escape the room” games. The player is immediately put into the role of a thief, who finds himself attempting to plunder an old castle in the hopes of riches. He is found by a Monk who professes to have been sealed in the castle for 20,000 years and offers to help him take the castle’s riches if the thief frees him.
The story introduction of the Mysterious Castle game is showcased in comic book style panels, and while I find the artwork interesting on these panels, the dialogue is absolutely terrible. While playing this game, I felt like I was reading a watered down version of the story through the panels instead of a rich engrossing tale. After the introduction, I noticed immediately that the options menu had no text at all, and there are no volume sliders for music or overall sound. I find this to be annoying considering that this is 2016, and it shouldn’t be too difficult to provide players with the capability to control volume and even the most simple of settings. Luckily, there is a Launch Configuration tool that enables you to set the game’s resolution and toggle windowed mode; otherwise, it would probably be even more frustrating.
Mysterious Castle plays like any other point-and-click game. You navigate each room (there are 10 rooms, and every room is a different level) searching various aspects of the room from a first person perspective. You collect and combine items in order to find the key to the next room and progress onward in finding all of the pieces of the golden skull that keeps the Monk sealed in the castle. One problem I immediately saw in doing the tutorial level was that sometimes where to search and what to find is not at all logical or obvious. The Tutorial has you looking on top of the back of a grandfather clock to find a hammer head so you can find the handle and break a vase. If I hadn’t been given the information on where to look, I doubt I would have even considered checking the top of the clock because there were so many more logical places it could have been hidden.
Some of the item interactions are even more confusing, like using a stick on a painting to find a key. How would you even realistically do that? There are other times, however, where I find the puzzles being clever and well crafted. The clues laid out through the game are oftentimes clever, but there are times where no clues are provided, and the player is left wondering what they’ve missed.
There are different puzzle types in Mysterious Castle: combination locks that the player has to find the combinations for, using and combining items to progress, and matching symbols in a specific sequence in order to reveal other aspects of the room. I must admit that, while a few of the puzzles were fun towards the middle section of the game, there are only 9 real puzzle rooms; the 10th is simply a conclusion of your journey with an ending cutscene that leaves things on an obvious, yet annoying, cliffhanger.
For such a beautifully 3D rendered game, I can honestly say that Mysterious Castle is highly disappointing. While the game works as it should, the fact that it is so short and so strange at times really causes the few fun moments to be eclipsed by boring, annoying puzzles and an overall bland storyline. I would not recommend Mysterious Castle, especially not for the $4.99 price point. My suggestion would be to find another point-and-click adventure OR if you are set on giving Mysterious Castle a try, wait for it to be on sale.
A PC Code for Mysterious Castle was provided by Black Shell Media for the Purpose of this Review