PLATFORM: PC, PS4, SWITCH, XBOX ONE (REVIEWED) | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Cid, like any other self-respecting demon, enjoys spending his evenings getting up to mischief. One night, while dreaming up ways to deride and distract the denizens of Darkestville, Cid’s old enemy, Dan Teapot, makes an appearance along with some not-so-friendly demon hunters hell-bent on ending Cid’s reign of terror. As a servant of chaos, your job is to help Cid overcome these fiends in a comedic point and click adventure that will certainly tickle the fancy of those with a fondness for old-school narrative-driven games.
Originally released in 2017 on PC and mobile, Darkestville Castle is now available on home consoles for the first time. Beautifully drawn with bold, brightly-coloured characters and environments, its story takes many ridiculous twists and turns and the relentlessly snarky, Deadpool-esque humour keeps the laughs coming from beginning to end. The gameplay is classic point and click stuff – using your pointer, click on objects to see what they are, figure out what to do with them (or try to – some of the puzzles are absurdly obtuse), use them in the right place at the right time and move on to the next scene. It’s an easy comparison to make, but if you’ve ever played a Monkey Island game, you know exactly what to expect with Darkestville Castle.
It’s not the longest game in the world, and often falls into the old point n’ click trap of reducing players to clicking on everything on screen and in their inventory one by one in order to solve some of the puzzles but, as long as you don’t go into this expecting any wheels to be reinvented, its dialogue should carry you through to the end nicely enough (providing you’re on board with its humour, of course).
