The Haunted Hoard: Castle of Terror (Commodore 64)
One of the first things a person looking up the text adventure game Castle of Terror will likely learn is that its main villain, The Count, cannot be killed. The game can still be finished, but there is also a scoring system that deliberately tries to imply you can only get a perfect score if you can find some way to kill the Count. The game’s creator, Grahame Willis, revealed it was always an impossible task, the implication of it there to try and encourage more playthroughs of the game, but it’s not like killing the vampire really feels all that important, for even if you could, Castle of Terror would still be a very empty adventure with very little story to grasp onto.
When you turn the game on, you’re first treated to a title screen where a very sprightly vampire all but gives away the mysterious Count in a castle is very much in line with the typical depiction of Dracula. When the adventure kicks off though, you are given no details on who you are or really any direction for what to do. You are simply standing in a village, but as you begin to explore and speak to locals, you’ll find an old man whose daughter is being held captive by the Count in a nearby castle. Spurred to heroism by this information, you are meant to head off to the castle and rescue her, a few obstacles, traps, and minor puzzles in your path, but overall, Castle of Terror is a surprisingly short game. Much of its length is definitely meant to come from figuring things out, and thanks to the way you control the game, that can take a considerable amount of time.
Castle of Terror relies on a text parser, the player inputting commands to instruct their unseen character to explore the small rural village and titular castle that does go by that name in game as well. Castle of Terror feels part-way between a text adventure and a graphic adventure, each new area you enter drawn and colored to give you an idea where you are but neither the words nor the picture ever give you a complete understanding of what you’re looking at on your own. You might be able to see the interior of a mill in the image, but the text describing the place will speak of objects you can’t even see. Almost every new area you enter though you’ll want to first type in “Show” to further learn all the things the game still didn’t tell you about when you entered, and after that a quick “examine” or the short form “ex” on most every item mentioned is still likely recommended to get a full understanding of the area. Frustratingly, even with all these tools to get details though, there can still be moments the game leaves out vital info. In one of the mills, there is a lantern you can pick up, but it is not shown in the picture nor are you told of its location. If you try to pick it up, you will trip over a sack of grain you had no idea was near it, break the lantern, and burn to death.
As cheap as this death sounds, one of the few delights in Castle of Terror are these kind of unfair unexpected deaths. Doing something seemingly simple as touching a spider-web or trying to cross a drawbridge and immediately dying will require you to restart, but the barefaced absurdity of such instantaneous deaths makes finding them a bit amusing. It helps that the game’s short length means you can often very quickly set about doing all the same tasks you did before, and once you do enter the Castle of Terror the game will have any future deaths only set you back to that moment you entered. You do need to carry over items from the village portion to the castle and can become stuck if you didn’t find them, and that’s where some of the more irritating issues with the imprecise way the game delivers details comes into play. There are very few objects in total in the game so even some of its more unexpected demands like a rung off a ladder can be found out through blind yet thorough experimentation with all of them, but the parser for your typed commands is also very finicky. To speak to the old man to understand your quest at all, you first enter the inn and the game refers to the fellow specifically as “old man”. He’s not the only man in the tavern, but if you type “talk to old man” the game will say it doesn’t understand the term “to”. It actually does and it is a very important word to use often, but the issue here is actually you called him “old man” when you should have just typed “talk to man”.
Things can get a bit absurd later when most any term that could refer to a girl is refused, but Castle of Terror does include a helpful Vocab feature. Type “vocab” and the game will give you a range of words that can be used in that half of the game. The vocab is primarily a list of verbs or commands like “inventory” that helps you check the items you have on hand, but it can at least thin the range of actions so you struggle figuring out what it wants you to type a little less. There are some unfortunately rigid solutions for how to progress at times though, your lantern can’t be used to light candles for example, but what makes the few puzzles present a bit less exciting is how plain they are. If the game isn’t expecting you to pick up on a very specific interaction it expects of you, it’s not being all too clever with the tasks you need to complete. The adventure in general feels rather basic, the castle having a slightly interesting dungeon but otherwise there’s not too much that stands out about it, the village, or any of the small trials standing in your path.
The score system does try to motivate you to be more thorough and experimental even if the game denies you a perfect 290 out of 290 points on purpose. You won’t know if you’re earning points for an action unless you are frequently typing “score” to see its updates, and there are actions that add to it or take away from it. Some items, interactions, and entire areas would otherwise be pointless if not for this unexciting scoring system, the points often coming from basic activities rather than being clever or figuring much out. There is at least a treasure in the castle to uncover that feels like a true puzzle despite its weak clues, but mostly the adventure involves whipping out required inventory items that are needlessly obfuscated by the game’s chosen presentation style. If there had been an authentic yet difficult series of actions needed to kill the Count maybe then something would feel a bit more substantial and like an interesting motivator, but there’s little creativity in Castle of Terror’s presentation to motivate you to try and clear it even with its technically short play time once you’ve figured it out.
THE VERDICT: Castle of Terror is far too rough to serve as a compelling text adventure, the images and writing both obscuring vital information too often while also expecting some unusual logic at parts. When the interactions aren’t obfuscated to their detriment they are often too basic to excite or just an instant death that is admittedly entertaining just for how audacious they often are in their suddenness. Castle of Terror is a short adventure stretched out by its uncooperative parser and annoying vagueness at times, but even if you ignore its gameplay faults, its utterly plain plot feels like a weak motivator to try and figure out what you’re even meant to be doing.
And so, I give Castle of Terror for Commodore 64…
A TERRIBLE rating. Some people consider learning a text parser’s desired phrasing a puzzle in itself, but when it comes down to it, Castle of Terror really isn’t asking for much of interest from you. The interactions in the village are basic, the castle’s most exciting feature is a dungeon that feels pretty cliche, and the girl you’re saving and the Count are just there to fill their roles. The plot present is the kind you’d find in a platformer that is deliberately just putting in the bare minimum to contextualize the action, but the “action” here is mostly trying to push past the game’s poor presentation to find what’s needed to succeed. With most of what the game considers puzzles just being about having the right item or using the right verb and without many reasonable hints towards them, Castle of Terror does feel like a game of just running through the list of interactions until something clicks. Unfortunately, the game’s ability to understand your commands can trip up on simple things, and the visuals don’t even get to get off the hook for lying to you. That invisible lantern is on a screen where you can move that grain sack and the castle has paintings with moving eyes and yet the game seems reticent to even depict everything you should be able to see. If Castle of Terror didn’t have that checkpoint as you enter the castle it could be grueling, but otherwise that splits the game into two small manageable sections where you can start to easily repeat necessary actions to get back to where you left off. It isn’t a satisfying process and it’s in service of a rescue mission with very little interesting developments or settings to hold your interest, so it really is just a game to beat for the sake of getting it over with.
Castle of Terror is more manageable than some text adventures that expect a lot more out of you, but it being achievable after a lot of trial and error doesn’t make it better. A task still should be entertaining, and with the solution to too many puzzles being about having the right item that mostly just required poking around all too thoroughly, there isn’t too much motivation to try and clear Castle of Terror. If the Count had personality, if the rooms you explored in the castle had more interesting presentations, if the items were used more for puzzles than as straightforward tools, then maybe Castle of Terror might be a bit more worthy of a playthrough. Instead, the fact you can conceivably complete it after enough experimentation seems the draw, and even then the game deliberately denies you a chance to kill the Count. Unless you also put together a yearly review series about games with horror theming, you’re better off looking for most any other text adventure to spend your time with.