I dove into Hunter Studio’s Lost Castle expecting a simple hack-n-slash style action game, but was pleasantly surprised when I realized that the best comparison I could make to this fun and alarmingly difficult title is the stellar Rogue Legacy from 2013. This is a beautiful thing.
Lost Castle begins with an expositional cutscene describing how a spell gone wrong opened the floodgates for monsters to overrun the titular castle. It cleverly explains that the monsters essentially moved in with all their treasure, and when the word spread, adventurers came from far and wide to slay them and make off with their riches.
So what players are given by Lost Castle is a legacy rogue-lite action game with light RPG elements and some lightheartedly dark (is that a thing?) comedic writing as a cherry on top. Every new run into the castle puts a new adventurer under the player’s control, and with every inevitable death, upgrades and unlocks can be purchased with the monster souls they’ve collected in order to improve the chances of success on future runs. Of course, any gold or unused souls are sacrificed and the next random adventurer starts with nothing but the purchased upgrades.
Though it’s not an original concept, this is a fantastic system that hasn’t yet been overused by dozens (let alone hundreds) of games, and Lost Castle is fun and addictive because of it. The movement and combat can feel a bit clunky to start, but upgrades a player can purchase actually improve the game’s input response over time.
Adventurers will fight through the many rooms and corridors of the castle, mostly fighting a few variations on each of a handful of different grunt enemy types. The art is great, and is reminiscent of the aesthetic of the Paper Mario games with its flat-looking sprites drawn in a vibrant color pallette. The adventurers, especially, are fun to see at the outset of each run, as they are always just a bit – and sometimes very – different from one another. I was particularly fond of my axe-wielding, pink-pompadour-and-beard-adorned Brooklyn hipster dude, despite getting obliterated by an abnormally brutal first few randomly generated rooms.
Roguelike elements! Yes, all the rooms are randomized, as are the enemies, items, weapons, potions and aforementioned adventurers. Combined with the upgrade tree that always begs to be filled out just a little bit more, this randomization makes replayability one of Lost Castle‘s strong suits.
It’s difficulty doesn’t hurt it in that area, either. This game is certainly a challenge, and I’d be lying if I said I am confident that I stand a chance at ever defeating any more than one of the game’s room-sized bosses. Every time I wander haplessly into a chamber with the giant green slime or the playful cross between a t-rex and Super Mario’s Yoshi, I feel resigned to my impending demise.
But it’s a joyful cycle of death and rebirth in Lost Castle. What’s more, you can share the love with a friend in the game’s two-player cooperative mode. I really enjoy playing Lost Castle and would recommend that GN’s readers check it out on Steam. At only 8 bucks, you really can’t go wrong; it’s definitely worth a whole lot more than that.
