Missed Classic: Castle Adventure - Won! (With Final Rating)

By Michael

I’ve kept my blog-related New Year’s resolution! I stopped tinkering with my own blog long enough to finish the game in this final post. And the game kept its resolution as well. Castle Adventure is still hunkering along at 320x300 pixels.

When we last visited the castle, I had done some research in the library.

It would have been so easy to post another Buffy picture, but I’ll be impressed if anyone knows the TV show this is from.

We learned that, to open the gate, we need to wave the scepter. Which means, of course, we need to find a scepter. Details, details.

We’ve been here before...

Well, it seems I’ve done all I can on those upper floors except for dealing with the fairy. So, I’m going to go back down to the ground level, and take one of the down staircases I previously ignored. In the northwest, there was a kitchen storage room, with empty shelves. I’ll start there. Except, I get a message when I try to go down: “It’s too dark to go that way!” Well, I suppose that’s a puzzle for the lamp I found. Back to my item dump...

It’s an Australian castle! I’m being attacked by a boomerang!

...and back to that basement, where now I can access the wine cellar. There’s a bat. I killed it easily. So there’s some barrels, which I examine, but I’m told they are just old, and I can’t pick them up, because they are too heavy. I try to use the door to the south, and I’m told it is locked. I wonder if this is a good use for that old key? I’ll go get it, and try. UNLOCK DOOR. And now I have a new path to the south. After taking a long passageway, I arrive at everyone’s favorite adventure game feature....

 #^&^%@^%@&^#^&! (Oops, I’m sorry, I can’t say those words in this family blog.)

... a MAZE. Ugh. Well, at least I can see through it on one screen. Or so it seems. First, I kill the spider. I wonder if the sword was necessary, since I haven’t picked up any boots yet.

A couple of screens of maze down, I find a treasure. And the author has left his initials hidden in the game.

We’ve been here before...

Wait, this wasn’t what we saw?

I continue through the maze, and on one of the screens, I find another creature.

Wait,wasn’t this an itsy, bitsy spider? Engorgio.

And I find a way out, and end up in the annex to the dungeon.

South of there is the torture room.

“I've just sucked one year of your life away. I might one day go as high as five, but I really don't know what that would do to you...”

I look at the table, and it’s covered with blood. Well, as a seasoned adventure gamer, I don’t think it’s nailed down, so... GET BLOOD

I truly hope he’s learned to spell since graduating high school...

I also look at the chains, and I’m told they look magical. So, I’ll come back with the wand. Hopefully I can find a way around the maze.

And I think I have, another locked door. My key works, and it brings me to an upper battlement. From there, I find my way down to the lower battlement that I saw on the second floor. So, I guess I missed something there, and will come back. But first, those chains. I get the wand, go back, WAVE WAND, and... nothing happens. Hmm.

So, I think I finished that floor, so I’ll examine that upper battlement. Four screens, a couple of down stairs, and a couple of up ones. Let’s go up.

On the castle wall, there’s some more stairs and not much else, until...

I’ll get you, my pretty. And your little dog slippers too.

RUBYS. And no, the game doesn’t recognize the correct spelling, either.

I take one of the stairs to the top of a tower, and find a HARP.

It’s made of GOLD.

So, I have an idea. I’m sure it’s a treasure. But when I play it, it also makes beautiful music. I’m having a King’s Quest V flashback here, but perhaps, could I cheer up a depressed fairy?

That fairy is now dust.

Yes, that worked.

So, back to exploiting things I’ve missed. Back to the upper battlement, but to the west tower this time... and, I’ve found the sorcerer’s quarters.

Why does the sorcerer need two beds?

Two beds and a mirror. Upon examination, two old beds and a magical mirror. So, let’s try again. WAVE WAND.

In the secret room, I find a crystal ball. I look at it, and “You see a man in a winding passageway, waving a Wand!” Well, I was just in some winding passageways, near the maze, so this might be a hint?

Let’s check this out. I’ll save you the trillion screenshots as I work my way back down to the dungeon area.

Puff, the magic dragon...

After the first was uneventful, I try the second winding passage I come to, and success. Well, kind of. It’s too dark to go that way. I need that darn lamp again. Dang inventory limit.

Finally, a room where the walls aren’t just grey stone.

I found a scepter. Could this be the one the book mentioned? Perhaps I have my way out, but I wonder if I have all 13 treasures.

So, I’ll make my way back to the starting room, where I’ve been keeping things. I’ll arrange what I have.

Junior, it’s time to clean your room. It’s a mess.

If my guesses are correct, I have 13 treasures and 9 other items.

Treasures:

• Diamond
• Harp
• Goldbar
• Silver bars
• Large Gem
• Fancy Goblet
• Jade Figurine
• Hourglass
• Holy Cross
• Lamp
• Crown
• Rubys
• Scepter

And the other items I have are:

• Helmet
• Sword
• Key
• Eyeglasses
• Book
• Wine Flask
• Crystal Ball
• Magic Wand
• Necklace

I’ll save the game and then try to escape.

WAVE SCEPTER

And then, I’ll walk a few steps south...

I’ve collected these “Treasues”

And with a perfect score! I’m feeling good about myself.

So, without further delay, let’s see how the game scored.

Final Rating

Puzzles and Solvability

Well, in some small ways, Castle Adventure exceeds expectations. There actually WERE puzzles! You couldn’t read the book without glasses, for example, and you needed to check out the crystal ball image to get a hint on the location of the scepter. True, 90% of the game was simple fetch quests, but I was expecting it to be more like 100%.

There was nothing unsolvable in this game. Heck, I probably could have solved it faster if I wasn’t blogging for you guys. (But don’t worry, I still love you all.) None of the puzzles felt exceptionally unfair, with the possible exception of knowing what to do with the loot you accumulated. But that’s a topic for a different category.

There’s object manipulation (filling the flask), item dependency situations (glasses, lamp), subtle and blatant hints on examination (crystal ball, book), the handling of the fairy and vampire, and the use of the magic wand. I’m rounding this up to 2.

Interface and Inventory

The arbitrary inventory limit of 6 comes to play here. WHY? Speaking as someone who programmed in BASIC back in the day, just a couple of years after this game was released, I can’t think of any legitimate programming reason for this limit, so this felt like just a way to make the game a little tougher. Otherwise, the interface has a lot of positives. The items on the screen are listed on the side of the screen, almost as well done as in a past Missed Classic. With the icons next to them. I joke a little about it, but it was a nice touch and well handled. ON the final screen, when I had all of my 13 treasures and other junk piled on the floor, the interface only listed a few of the items, but I’m choosing to regard that as an unexpected bug rather than lazy programming. The inventory limit? THAT was lazy.

The parser was generally serviceable, and I’m somewhat happy that the verb USE was never programmed in. That was the lazy verb used in later games, so people didn’t have to think how an object could be interacted with. Like the hand icon in a point & click, I suppose.

As for navigation, your character does exactly what you’d expect by using the directional keys, stairways and passageways are generally obvious (except for the secret ones, of course), and no special instructions were necessary. Even the diagonal keys work, for us old-school folk using the numeric keypad, so you could travel in 8 directions.

The typographical errors only really affected my handling of one item, the RUBYS. But since the game spelled that on the screen for me when I first encountered them, it won’t affect the score. It was fair.

Again, as in the puzzle category, there were item manipulation and dependency puzzles, and those were handled well. The overall interface was straightforward, and I rarely stumped the simple parser, and when I did, I was able to figure out the proper verb quickly enough.

The game has a save/load feature, and while my research tells me there’s a possible bug in it (saving before encountering a certain creature makes it harder to kill it), I never experienced that bug, so I won’t penalize the game. A detriment, however, was a lack of a way to check your status while playing, your score and which treasures you collected.

Having read through some past missed classics to keep this score in line, again, I’ll be generous, because the game made a healthy effort. I could justify a 3, but instead I’ll score a 4.

Story and Setting

Well, here’s where the game fails to shine. The story can be summed up in a few lines from the game’s instructions:

I mean, it’s pretty much the same story as DOOM, but I don’t expect that game to score high on the PISSED scale either.

The setting worked for the time, I suppose, the ASCII art drew me in as a little kid. The room descriptions did add a little bit to the game. A little.

I want to be generous here, but can I really give more than a 1?

Sound and Graphics

Well, the game wasn’t completely devoid of this category. It played music at the start, when you played the flute, and when you won the game. And graphics, well, it made use of the 256-character keyset to visualize the world. So, it gets a score of 1.

Environment and Atmosphere

Other than the occasional attacks from random wildlife, there was no tension, no need to rush, no sense of urgency. The “art”, while it does somewhat resemble crumbling cement blocks of a castle, wasn’t enough to heighten the barely one-line room descriptions.

Still, it wasn’t all bad. Even if it was meaningless (“it’s dead.” “it’s red.” etc) there were descriptions for most everything and each room, and a lot of appropriate objects used to make it not just a maze quest through empty hallways. Perhaps I’m being a little generous here, but I’m rounding up to 2.

Dialog and Acting

Well, there is next to none. This overlaps with the previous category, a bit, because we tend to include the room descriptions and narration in this score, and that’s the saving grace for this game. Even though there’s some odd spelling errors, there’s descriptions for every room, there’s descriptions, even if minimal, for practically every item, even if it’s just basic colors. Some of the descriptions are meant to be hints (“It’s magical!”) and was effective in providing the right hints to solve the puzzles. So, a generous 2 here.

I think I’ve been more than generous here, so I won’t be adding any extra points. 2+4+1+1+2+2=12/.6=20

This score seems about right to me, because the game tried hard to do what it could with the limitations of a 360k disk drive of the time.

Reiko guessed this score exactly, so her treasure chest will be filled with SILVER BARS, GOLD BARS, RUBYS, and even some CAPs when the next mainline game finishes up.

Until then, I’ll go back to my wizard’s tower until the next game for me comes along.

Session Time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes