Creatures & Castles Review
PROS
- Interesting take on maze-solving.
- Easy to learn controls.
- Difficulty scales appropriately depending on the score you aim for.
CONS
- Poor drawing detection; adds erroneous steps for no clear reason.
- Failing (which is easy to do) completely resets levels including paths.
VERDICT
The frustration felt while playing Creatures & Castles falls almost in step with how much of a perfectionist you are; if you're aiming to get 'three stars' on every level, you might just go mad.
- Full Review
- App Store Info
Do you fancy yourself to have a steady hand and god-like skills of timing? If so you might just be one of the few people Creatures & Castles by hiive intends to target as you plunge in to the labyrinthine depths of this puzzle title.The premise is a simple one that's easy to get behind as you're presented with room after room of maze-like designs that need to be explored to collect a treasure before exiting the level. The catch is that you can only move on a path that you have drawn prior to moving, with penalties being applied if you stop then start again. Enemies roam the levels, moving along fixed paths, making the success of each level dependent on drawing and timing your run efficiently, however tiny mistakes are penalized heavily as touching enemies will reset the entire level along with the path you've drawn.This can be especially frustrating on later levels as discovering the most efficient path isn't always difficult, but the longer a path is, the higher your chance of failure becomes and redrawing the entire path again and again is a harsh penalty to deal with. To compound this even further, the path-drawing system is fraught with detection problems that often cause bizarre random blips where your character dances around a spot and redrawing the entire path is no guarantee it won't occur again somewhere else.The idea behind Creatures & Castles is an elegant one that can (if things go your way) feel really satisfying as you carefully time and dodge all the enemies in your path. Unfortunately it rarely reaches the zenith of its potential, making it a hard game to recommend.
Screenshots
$0.99
