Mystery Castle Review

You know how it goes, a Dwarf castle gets attacked by some big, nefarious, nasty beastie and well someone now has to go in there and sort out their mess. The man chosen to do this task, is little Monty, a magician.

So in he goes (though it has to be said he's a tad reluctant) and soon Monty finds himself up to his neck in trouble, trouble that can only be sorted by solving the puzzles ahead of him.

Monty will soon be shoving crates into gaps to make bridges, dodging fire golems, teleporting through magical doorways, and collecting keys amongst other tasks.

So with his fate in your hands, you'd better get too it then and prepare to do a lot before you get to the end, because once you've done the Dwarf's a favour, you will have to do it again in a Ice Castle, then onto...no, no spoilers, it's up to you (as usual) to find out what happens next.

All in a day's work....

As mentioned, Monty has to manipulate objects, dodge enemies or at the very least, use them to unwittingly help him progress through the first stage and then onto the next, etc, etc.

At times you'll study the map and think there are too many crates, or too many keys for the level, so it becomes apparent that in some levels you will not need to get everything on screen except for the precious gems, snow crystals or whatever else you have to collect.

If it goes wrong, you can reset the level or indeed, if you find it too tricky, you can move onto the next one, it's up to you.

Controlling Monty

This is nice and simple, left stick moves him and the D-Pad can be used to change the way he is facing. The controls are smooth and responsive and should not take much to master them at all.

It's just the levels themselves that may take a little mastery, but give it some thought and you'll soon work your way through it, though it might take a few attempts.

It looks simple but it isn't as easy as it looks but the difficulty curve is relatively gentle, and the kids will probably be showing us grown ups exactly how it should be done! (Isn't that always the way anyway?)

Graphics

The graphics have that 8 bit gaming era look to them, that's been polished up to HD standard. Seems that a lot of games these days want to take us down memory lane, and I don't have a problem with that, so I like the style used to present this title.

The music is decent, nothing outstanding but suits the game perfectly. The physics? Well they are sufficient to the task at hand.

Summary/Pros and Cons.

What we have here is a kid friendly puzzler but they may want mom and dad's help from time to time, but if my experience of this is anything to go by, then it can get it's hooks into them!

My wife is no longer an Xbox One virgin thanks to this title and likes it perhaps more than I do!

The Cons? Well one and one only to be truthful. Once completed, is there anything there to haul you back to it again and entice you to play through it one more time? 

To be truthful no. There's no online leaderboard that lists scores or the time taken to complete the level, so once done, chances are it won't surface again in the near future.

But it will engage you for some hours that's for sure and it's a nice break and change of pace. One that is not a must buy but definitely worth considering getting if you like this sort of game.

Thanks Xbox for the code.