Adding to their list of over 20 Titles strong, big time iPhone game developer Gameloft releases Castle of Magic, an amazing, attractive, and equally ambitious platformer for the iPhone and iPod touch. Castle of Magic was released June 12, 2009 and has since seen one update for minor bug fixes and OS 3.0 compatibility. As platformers are more on the rise in today’s app store, few actually offer an experience quite as magical as this one.
Castle of Magic’s story puts you in the shoes of a nameless boy and his friend at play. Before you know it, your friend is kidnapped by the evil wizard Nefastax, who shifts reality to a castle of, well, magic. It is then your job to go find and rescue her. Typical story, of course, but with its charming, bright and colourful look, and exceptional challenge, Castle of Magic will test your skills through 5 various worlds within the Castle, including the tree filled ‘Green Labyrinth’, the swashbucklin’ ‘Pirate Ship’, the snow engulfed ‘Cold Ice’, the delicious ‘Yummy Cake’, and the the gravity defying ‘Mysterious Space’. Each world has 3 levels, and a boss level within them. Each level, with careful exploration, and revealing all the level’s secrets, took me around 5-10 minutes each level for the first couple worlds, and around 15 minutes per level in later worlds. As I mentioned, there are secrets areas, sometimes revealing one of 3 hidden stars that you can find in each level. Also strewn throughout levels are a generous amount of little purple gems, in which act as your ‘Health’, but I will touch on that in a few. 100 of these gems will grant you 1 extra life.
The game is controlled by an on screen virtual D-Pad on the lower left side of the screen, and 2 action buttons (Attack and Jump) on the lower right side, which right off the bat annoys some, as they can get pretty rough to get used to. Though on occasion I pressed the downward stomp movement when I meant to go either left or right in mid-air, I never had any game hindering problems with the controls, and thought they were very responsive and well implemented, especially for a virtual D-pad. Castle of Magic’s platformer style seems to borrow elements of play from 2 well known titles in the genre, Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers 3, and Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog. Scattered throughout the map you will find magical items that grant powers to your character. For instance, one power allows you to turn into a red mage that can shoot fire by the flick of a wand, or the Inuit on the ‘Cold Ice’ world, that acts as an ice climber. Think Mario 3 when getting the Fire Flower Power, or the Ice Climber power to cast similarities. If hit by an enemy while in these ‘costumes’, you will lose your powers, just like in Mario games as well. However, if you are hit without any powers active, you will lose a sum of the Purple Gems you have collected. Think rings like in Sonic the Hedgehog, if you get hit, they scatter, and you can go and get a portion of them before they disappear. If you are hit and you have no gems however, you die and restart at the nearest checkpoint, which are pretty generous throughout the levels.
The game plays simple enough, giving tutorials on controls as you start the game. My initial thoughts on the game were mind blowing, and even having finished up the game, that thought still holds true. Clocking in around 3-4 hours game play time, this game kept me interested from Start to Finish. The overall polish of the game is phenomenal, with a scarce level of technical bugs, and a soundtrack that is just too fun to ignore. The sound effects were spot-on for a magical platformer, and never got old. The graphics were crisp and amazing to look at, keeping a frame rate that I can say never stuttered on my 2nd Gen iPod touch. The overall character details were lovely, and the baddies even looked good too! The boss enemies were very well done, and several little details made the fights really enjoyable, though not the most challenging.
As I mentioned previously, the game ran me around 3-4 hours of total game play, looking, discovering, and exposing all secrets within the levels I could possibly find. One disappointment I had with the game is that collecting all 3 stars in all the levels did nothing other than boost the scores for those levels. I was hoping that maybe collecting them all would unlock a place, or open up something. And with no online leader boards or anything like that, there is no real incentive to collect them (unless you are just a perfectionist such as myself) or keep up your score. That also cuts on replayablilty as once you are done with the game, you can go back and look for everything, or start over.
In conclusion, I have to say despite a few things that could improve the game, this is a beast of a good time. I constantly found myself sneaking in as much play time as possible just to get a little further and see where I got next. The 4.99 price of admission may be a bit steep for some, but for those who bite the bullet, you will be trialed with a myriad of fun obstacles, clever boss fights, beautiful graphics, and overall the best platformer experience on the app store. Whether you are a casual gamer, or a hardcore gamer, this platformer I suggest to anyone. Here’s hoping for downloadable content for more worlds down the road!
Booch138 gives Castle of Magic 5/5 stars.
This information was written solely to inform and entertain through both fact and opinion. All material written by Frank Cabello aka Booch138. 7/13/2009
Castle of Magic Appstore Link: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=319384204&mt=8
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