Having clicked 'No', I will add the proviso that I WOULD recommend 'Castle: Never Judge a Book by its Cover', but ONLY to fans of the 'Castle' TV series! Anyone else should probably avoid.
Whilst I enjoyed the game, that was primarily because, as a fan, I recognised the in-jokes to some of the episodes of the series and the faithfully recreated scenes from the sets of the show.
The gameplay itself is a bit lacklustre. Most of the game is spent playing the missing objects mechanic whereby you pick out a small list of items from a large screen full of stuff. A bit 'Where's Waldo', but fine, although this does get tedious rather fast. Of more promise are the many little logic puzzle games which are many and varied - most are familiar and simple, but some are a bit more challanging. The only downside to these logic puzzles is that the 'Hint' mechanic allows you to completely skip the games, thus rendering them utterly pointless.
And here we get to the big drawback to this game: the 'Hint' mechanic. In most games where hints are given, usually you get actual 'hints' to what to do, but leaving you to continue to work things out. In 'C:NJaNbiC' the 'Hint' machinic leads you around by the hand. Not sure what you should be doing? 'Hint' Go here, do this. Can't solve this puzzle mini-game? 'Hint' Solved. Really, the button should be labelled 'Bored Now' or 'Too Lazy'.
I bought the game with the understanding that there would be no animations, just still scenes, but I was disappointed that there was NO actual voice-acting at all. The entire game takes place in virtual silence, with some barely adequate, low-key synth music to fill the void of all the text boxes as the characters 'talk'. This is a real shame since the game is based on the 'Castle' TV show which has characters with distinct and charming voices, so why not get them doing some voice acting for the game? And the synth music is hardly inkeeping with the music used throughout the TV series, which is chock full of funky current music tracks. I guess the licensing costs too much?
As already mentioned, there were no animations, it was all character portraits and still scene imagery, but the game would certainly have benefited from animated characters and backdrops. But hey, costs, what can you do?
And finally, lets mention length. It's short. I played it through in 4 hours, and that was by doing ALL the puzzles. If I skipped through all the ones I had trouble with, that time would probably have been halved. Considering that the game is made without animation or sound content, could they perhaps not have made futher episodic iterations with new games or mechanics to it? Shame, as that might have made it worth the money, to have further stories to work through, like actually playing a season of 'Castle', with themes continued in subsequent episodes. That would at least have given the game a lift in it's simplistic and obvious storytelling.
Which leads me to what is probably the biggest issue I had with the game: the story. Without spoiling it, I will say that it was obivous from very early on what the situation was and who the killer was - Ok, so that reguarly occurs in episodes of the show where you can guess who-dunnit, but the story doesn't do anything clever with it, and comes to a boring and obvious conclusion. For a game based on a TV series with pretty decent storylines, and featuring a professional Author, it commits the ultimate sin of 'poor story telling', and that's the final nail in the coffin.
To summarise: the game has some fun little puzzles and recognisable scenes/characters from the TV series, but lack of good sound, animation and poor storytelling make it very bland, and the short, limited story is too brief, with no hope of any kind of replayability. For a casual game, it's... Okay. Ish. For a point & click game, it's... Poor.
One to avoid.
