The Haunted Hoard: Costume Quest (PC)

As people get older, the joy in trick-or-treating on Halloween tends to fade away. Dressing up and going door to door asking for candy seems to lose a bit of its magic when you reach an age where it’s probably easier to just buy yourself a huge bag of it if you had a mind to. While Halloween can still be enjoyed for its spooky trappings and a bit of the magic can be recaptured by chaperoning children as they trick-or-treat or handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, it can’t quite match the childhood fascination with the concept. Despite all this, Costume Quest is able to recontextualize Halloween night and trick-or-treating into a delightful little game that reinvigorates a bit of that lost feeling or can potentially just add to a child’s appreciation for the holiday.

Costume Quest’s story feels like something that could have been pulled right out of a G-rated kids movie, with all the silly fun you can expect from a light-hearted family romp. Twins Reynold and Wren are both setting off to trick-or-treat for the night, Reynold having an earnest interest in the fun activities of Halloween while Wren seems more interested in the holiday’s focus on all things spooky and scary. After choosing which child you wish to play as, the other one ends up kidnapped by a group of goblins called the Grubbins who are going about trying to collect all the candy in the neighborhood for the dark forces they serve. Whichever kid you’re playing as swears to stop them from succeeding, following in their wake in their quest to save their sibling and the holiday. When you enter your first fight though, you’ll notice the real spark of imagination that Costume Quest has, because when you and enter that battle, you transform from a small kid in a cardboard costume into a gigantic robot! The main thrill of battle in Costume Quest is the awesome disconnect between the home-made costumes the children wear and how they appear in battle as full-fledged and often intimidating designs, with even your enemies going from monsters with goofy appearances when patrolling the neighborhood into the kind of monster designs you’d expect to find in a legitimate fantasy game. Over the course of the game you’ll gradually make more costumes to use in these fights, and seeing just how they’ll appear when filtered through this amplifying lens is one of the game’s most enjoyable features. There are some expected costumes in the bunch like a vampire that doesn’t really break away from convention, but the unicorn goes all in on their own interesting twist on the concept and the developers throw in some unexpected ideas for costumes as well such as the Statue of Liberty.

While the designs and the animations of the costumes in action are a joy to see, the combat capabilities between the costumes don’t change all too much in the turn-based RPG battle style. The basic attacks of a costume boil down to a standard strike that hits one enemy and then an ultimate attack that takes some time to build up between turns, this attack being the one with more unique effects. These more powerful attacks can hit multiple targets, shield one of your allies, heal the group, or inflict statuses on the enemy depending on what costume you’re using, and since its the biggest appreciable difference besides some slightly different defense and attack stats between suits, you’ll likely be choosing your children’s outfits based on which ultimate attacks you deem most useful. There is a secondary consideration for battle though that may influence you as well, and that is the game’s timed button presses during attacks. After selecting your basic attack, a costume will have a condition that can allow it to do more damage if successfully executed, such as pressing a button at the right time or mashing a bunch of buttons quickly enough. You do not need to succeed to do damage, but it provides a bit more interactivity in battle and gives you a small edge if you engage with this angle, so picking a costume with simple button requirements can better assure you succeed at these conditions. Defending against enemy attacks also involves timed button presses, although these are independent of costume choice in how they lessen the damage the characters take.

The only other real attack you can execute outside of the basic and ultimate ones comes from stamps. By assigning a stamp to a kid, they can get a unique perk such as a stat boost, attacks that deal poison or splash damage, or for that small bit of variety, add a move that can stun opponents to their arsenal. It gives a simple layer of customization to how you approach combat in addition to the costume choice, and Costume Quest is incredibly kind in that losing a fight just leads to a chance to retry it quickly after. You can even run from a battle without penalty if you feel a fight is a lost cause until you reassign some stamps and costumes or level up to be a bit stronger. However, fights themselves are mostly straightforward affairs since your options are so limited, especially if you choose not to use a stamp that gives you the extra stunning attack. You are mostly left with your basic attack for a few turns and then you can choose when to call on your charged up ultimate attack when needed. There is a bit of strategy to be found still, since enemies usually come in a small pack and may have heavy hitters or healers that need to be dealt with first. Early on, making a wrong decision in a fight can doom the battle to failure since you are usually on a pretty even level with your opponents until the third kid joins the group, so figuring out a plan of attack keeps these simple fights from being boring. Costume Quest could have done with at least a bit more complexity to make the battles more thrilling though, as it could quite easily add an extra ability to each costume without alienating the young audience it was probably hoping to ease into the often complex world of role-playing games. One area that leads to a bit of costume selection centralizing is the rarity of heals, most of them tied to just a few ultimate attacks or coming as a passive effect for one character at a time from a stamp. The game does inject some late game difficulty with boss battles that test endurance as much as strategy despite your built up party, these fights really tapping into that need to use certain costumes for healing or defensive roles.

While the spectacle and strategy of combat makes up most of the gameplay of Costume Quest, you do spend a lot of time as your kids in their cardboard costumes as well. The goal of stopping the monsters from taking the candy actually manifests as a need to go door to door in different locations, checking to see if the candy inside is safe and ousting any monsters who got to the loot first. Along the way you collect candy, quite appropriately, and it serves as the game’s currency stand-in, the player able to buy battle stamps with it, but there are other small quests to undertake while trick-or-treating as well. There’s a bobbing for apples minigame that makes multiple appearances, a costume contest, and plenty of treasures hidden around the area that can either build up your collection of gross candy trading cards or even give you the materials and blueprints for optional costume builds. Some costumes even have special abilities outside of battle, like the robot using roller skates to zoom around and the knight costume able to defend itself from falling debris with a shield. Nothing really ever pushes the player too far, keeping things accessible and quick so nothing grows too stale, although it can lose a bit of its thrill when you only need one more costume piece or hidden item in one of the games large areas. Walking around and interacting with people in Costume Quest helps to show off the game’s fun sense of humor, capturing that clean cartoon writing you’d find in an enjoyable family-friendly experience while also injecting some deliberately jarring but appropriate jokes meant for any older players of the game. The care Double Fine Productions put into making this a cheerful little Halloween adventure for all ages shows from start to finish regardless of any small gameplay hiccups.

THE VERDICT: Costume Quest is a charming and adorable Halloween adventure based around an incredibly creative idea of childrens’ homemade costumes turning into giant, cooler battle versions when they enter the game’s turn-based RPG battles. Much of the fun in the experience comes from the commitment to the theme and cute writing, and calling it some simple Halloween fun is accurate in another way. The battle system can have a bit of strategy to it, but its a bit too basic for how often you engage with it. It accommodates this well at times by making the player about as strong as their opponents, but it can’t completely escape how some of the fights boil down to executing a basic attack repeatedly and then a super attack. There’s more to do than just battles though, and the extra touches of trick-or-treating, bobbing for apples, and other little diversions mean it never stops being delightful.

And so, I give Costume Quest for PC…

A GOOD rating. When it comes to capturing that childhood joy of the Halloween holiday, Costume Quest does an excellent job. It’s a light-hearted and silly story designed to make you smile. It comes up a bit short in the combat design though, mainly because it only really has the minimal strategic considerations to give it depth, and those considerations don’t tend to deviate until something new like a boss is added to the picture. The battles aren’t pushovers because they are balanced appropriately, but your considerations during them are a bit too straightforward, even if you do decided to wear the stamps that give you the one extra attack. If every costume was just given one extra attack with a special ability, there could have been much more variety to the experience, but Costume Quest certainly has enough going for it to tap into the fun of the Halloween season.

Costume Quest takes the fun activities that kids love from the Halloween season and ties them to game mechanics that players of any age can enjoy. Even if you’re too old to trick-or-treat, maybe you can find some of the cheer children still find in it by playing a game that ties it to gameplay and cute storytelling that appeals to all ages.