The Castle
Review by Orb
The Castle is a stylized HyperCard-like (it was actually
made with SuperCard, a program similar to HyperCard on steroids)
point-and-click adventure game that pays homage to Myst while
avoiding the clone tag by taking the genre in an entirely different
direction.
It is an atmospheric romance/horror/sci-fi mix; while not as
detailed as some others of this ilk, limited by the Myst-style
graphics mostly popularized several years ago, it stands well
on its own. Blueline gets kudos for publishing this genre on the
Mac platform, certainly a rarity in this day and age.
The game is played from a first-person perspective and starts
off in front of a castle, which actually has the appearance of
a large mansion with two turrets. The player finds a cryptic note
from "N" stuck into the gate. The N is for Noemi, the
main of three characters in the plot who are involved in a lover's
triangle, trapped in a place they don't understand. The other
two characters are Rod, Noemi's ex-fiance, and Brad, with whom
she appears to be in love. (Okay, I admit I found their names
exceptionally cheesy, and in the case of Brad, I couldn't stop
thinking about The Rocky Horror Picture Show.)
You must locate Noemi's diary and then, throughout the game,
collect and read the pages to move the plot forward and get clues
to solve puzzles. The plot reads like a trashy dime-store romance
novel you just can't put down. Noemi's beginning chronicle mirrors
yours, and the initial question of where you are and what this
place is pulls you forward through the game. Rivalry between Rod
and Brad becomes clear. This was all too Harlequin Romance novelesque
for me, but the story did move well. The action at times gets
a little R-ratedthis is definitely not for the kiddies.
Gameplay allows you to get your bearings before you get a clue
as to who you are or what you're doing, which I liked. There was
no Encyclopedia Britannica to read and absorb before you start
out from the opening location, which a number of games seem to
resort to (you'll have to forgive me, I'm now in the middle of
Secrets of the Luxor and almost fell over when I realized
how many nasty, dryly written pages I'd have to wade through to
find clues get through the first few puzzles). The story is cleverly
dished out to you one page at a time, as reward for completing
puzzles or correctly moving forward, and as you progress, the
pages are found and put into the diarythis also gives clues
to the puzzle solutions, mixed seamlessly with the developing
story. A nice design touch is that the book will save where you
were last so you don't have to go back through all of the pages,
which adds to the gameplay. The game is for the most part linear,
moving forward in sequence. Objects to collect are limited to
the diary, its pages, a series of keys, gun, and bullets.
The graphics are nicely drawn in a pleasing style, and they add
to the overall mood/ambiance and storyline. There are numerous
objects throughout the game that are so carefully rendered that
they end up being red herrings; in other words, in most games,
items you can use are more carefully drawn, and this is often
a tip-off. In The Castle, there is quite a bit to look
at that you end up not using, which I think is a clever touch.
One drawback is that it must be daytime to enter the house; it
would have been fun to see it at night. The interface was designed
to be minimal, which is a strong suit to those of us who hate
screen clutter.
Nighttime gameplay is especially nice with realistic sound effects
and lighting. Daylight sound effects were well-done too, and you
really have the sensation of walking through a garden. The music
is pretty and haunting, and it works well to set the mood and
create atmosphere. There is very little voice acting, and what
there is would have been better left out, including an oracle
reminiscent of the old Jonny Quest cartoons from the 60s.
But the worst is one of the characters in the end sequence, who
sounds like a Swede in a barrel. Wait, Blueline is located in
Switzerlandmaybe it was a Swede in a barrel!
I should probably advise all you gamers out there struggling
with Maze Redundancy Syndrome to take your Dramamine, because
this is going to make you sick. Yes, Virginia, there is a maze,
replete with graphics that make it hard to discern where you are
and which way you just turned. The other bad news I'll just shove
out of the way really fast is that you don't just go in there
once but, at a minimum, over 10 times to perform key actions or
find items such as pages or keys. Okay, now that I've gotten that
off my chest, the good news is that it is not an overwhelmingly
huge maze, and it's fairly simple to navigate once you get the
hang of it and have all the areas explored and mapped out, but
the use of it does, obviously, become a bit redundant and unnecessary.
There is, however, a certain amount of satisfaction during gameplay
upon discovering new objects in old places previously explored,
including the maze.
Some of the puzzles are intuitive and meld seamlessly with the
gameplay, and the rest are "solve it or you aren't going
any further," straight, old-fashioned puzzles, including
one sliding puzzle and one magic square. It seems unusual to me
for a game so story-driven to have so many straight puzzles. It
seems, in most games with these sorts of puzzles, game designers
will resort to a thin "okay, now you're trapped ... figure
out the puzzles to get out" scenario such as in Shivers
or the Jewels of the Oracle series, and this is a pleasant
change in design with The Castle. There is a wine glass
puzzle in the salon that is an exact duplicate of the book puzzle
in The 11th Hour, with the same solution, which is a weakness
in this game.
As far as the gameplay goes, one difficulty I found in design
was that you need to change from day to night and vice versa to
find items and progress, and although this in itself was a fun
twist, the method for changing became quickly redundant and time-consuming,
and I felt it was one of the weak points of the game.
Other perks included in the package is a Tidbits file, which
contains an After Dark program, desktop pictures, and startup
screens. Also available from the publisher's website is a "Hint
Box," which is a standalone hint application similar to the
Universal Hint System (UHS). I found this to be handy, giving
just the amount of impetus needed but not too much, and it also
keeps track of how often it has been accessed, gently reminding
you to solve things yourself. 
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The Verdict
The Lowdown
Developer: Blue
Line Studios
Publisher: Blue
Line Studios
Release Date: 1998
Available for: 
Four Fat Chicks Links
Walkthrough
Player
Feedback
Interview
with Game Designer
Screenshots

System Requirements
68020 or newer processor
Power PC 90 MHz recommended
Hard disk
8 MB available RAM, 10 recommended
System 7 or newer
13-inch monitor
256 colors
4X CD-ROM drive
Where to Find It

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