Castle In The Darkness Critic Reviews

This is a must-buy platformer for anybody who either grew up on that genre as a kid or who fell in love with it again — or maybe even for the first time — with Shovel Knight.

Castle In The Darkness is a wonderful game, a clever Metroidvania. Matt Kap, its designer, goes straight to the point, taking the best from the NES era. Like a rose, this game has its thorns and stings, but, as the say, “no pain, no gain”.

It's a unique adventure, and even if frustrating at times, its own peculiarities will keep you trying and trying to get to the end.

Castle in the Darkness is a metroidvania game that deserves more recognition. If you ever enjoyed this genre back on the 8-bit machines, you shouldn't miss this one.

Castle in the Darkness proves itself to be worth way more than the price of admission with hours of good ‘ol fashioned platforming action for only $5.99 on Steam.

It'd be right to call Castle in the Darkness difficult, perhaps even cruel, but so finely tuned it is that it never borders into anger territory.

A game designed by a retro lover for retro lovers. Castle in the Darkness will find it difficult to reach younger audiences, since it aims almost specifically those gamers that took their first gaming steps during the 8-bit era.

‘A retro platformer enriched with some modern ideas’ – how many times have we already read something like that? Fortunately Castle in the Darkness is among few games that actually managed to pull that off.

Castle in the Darkness seems to have the best from the 8bit era. It's good-looking, plays fine, it has many bosses and secrets that people who loved playing this kind of games on NES will love. But it's also flawed by an erratic difficulty. There are too many instadeath spikes, sometimes impossible to notice, and checkpoints are sometimes really misplaced. Still an enjoyable action platformer that will probably not please everyone looking for a simple nostalgic trip.

It felt mean spirited, harsh and unbalanced.