Distant castle

Distant Castle is a game that advertises itself as being able to be a first person and third person adventure puzzle game, and well it is indeed truthful on this claim, since you will likely be switching between the two to suit the more ideal point of view. This was an interesting concept, and one thing I will quickly note is that there is no gameplay footage on the steam page, keep this in mind for later. If there was one way to describe Distant Castle, it would be….chaos. “This is a stand-alone puzzle adventure game with shooting and action elements. Game, you have been transferred to a castle, the castle is chaos, use your wisdom to find your stuff, crack the levels in the castle, beat the final boss, finally win the game.” If you would like a short summary, the game itself feels incomplete, be it for some asset issues, lack of real direction, obscure passages to a hidden story, and just some wicked motion blur when moving the camera in third person. [h1]Story[/h1] As far as story goes, there is not one you see immediately, but as you progress a bit you uncover that there is a story that either is happening or has happened. Without much spoiling, there is this “ghost girl” that keeps reappearing for unknown reasons and we later find out through in game dialogues that she disappeared after the occurrence of…something. It is a bit vague and the game has a tendency to glitch out at times, so progressing was more of a chore than an enjoyment. [h1]Graphics[/h1] The graphics are a mixed batch in all honesty. Before I get to what I did not like, the lighting and shadows had a nice feel to them, nothing overly realistic but it suited the setting quite nice, though this could be due to the engine being used.The carpets were also quite nice, very lovely asset, though it was odd why there were carpets on the ceiling, but they were still lovely to look at up there. I will note the ceiling carpets were far more detailed and less pixelated than the ones on the ground. Onto the rest, The walls look a bit barren in some areas, having some floral imprinting on others, sudden changes within the same room just felt odd. The castle itself looked very…barren in some areas. Walls aside, it does seem to follow a magical/floral theme throughout, having what looks like sealed magical doors and some interesting looking pillars. Your character model ends up looking quite stiff in third person, making it more enjoyable to play in third person, except when you “roll” which caused your screen to follow the roll (you can imagine how disorientating that felt). There are other character models within game, one being the ghost girl which looks quite different from the character, skeletons and suits of armour, the suits of armour suiting the style of the player model and the skeletons being more cartoony like the ghost girl, overall it one or the other felt out of place in terms of style and consistency. [h1]Music[/h1] Dead Silence. There is just dead silence when you are playing, the game has a mechanic of switching from night to day and each time it changes it plays a little tune which is not bad, but aside from this, you will hear just the empty echo of your footsteps. There are notes scattered about that you collect and the purpose is unknown but they do make some noise, and some of the puzzles do as well revolve around some for of music. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] The game is just very very “open”. You start off without any clear directions or controls, the controls can be found on the wall, but the controls are the full item controls, meaning they are the full controls but you lack any items that work with some of the buttons, such as the dagger and magic ball. There are areas you can look through walls, roll through windows and make yourself stuck outside, and even gaps between staircases and the next floor. There is an odd im assuming glitch though it seems to be a part of the game, where if you die on any puzzle and did not save you are sent back to the beginning with the twist that all the previous doors you went through seem to be permanently locked and the levels that control the doors are still “Active” meaning the door is supposed to be open or active but nothing happens. The doors aside, you lose any pickups you and they do not respawn. The dagger is lost forever if you mess up on a puzzle that kills you upon failure, The last thing I will mention is that if you save, that is where you will spawn, so either way you are stuck and not able to backtrack to see if you missed anything. Overall, it was initially quite interesting because the castle was described as the castle being chaos, but I did not expect for the castle to be this hectic and unprogressable. The puzzles were a bit odd in that you just stepped into a room and kind of had to figure it out ad you went, which resulted in the deaths and which resulted in the having to restart. As much as I loved the carpets, I sadly did not complete these game like I usually do for my other games. Verdict 1/10 If you enjoyed this review please follow our curator [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/9673931/]here[/url]