Castle on the coast plus#

Castle on the coast plus#

Plus there are petals you can find all over that you can use to purchase costumes. No complex systems preclude you from grabbing the collectibles either, you just approach them and they get tallied up. This game attacked the pleasure centers of my brain. These are stashed all over the place, and the time I spent poring over every nook and cranny looking for them was blissful. But you’ll need to use collectibles to open the doors. In the castle’s hub, there are entryways to the four areas containing keystones. He also has a jetpack that can be used to get around more easily. With George, I was almost always able to save myself due to just how perfect the gameplay here is. Many of the game’s platforming challenges would be hard with many platformer protagonists. He can jump, double jump, roll much like Mario in Odyssey, twirl in the air, and execute repeated wall jumps. They’re extremely responsive and George, despite being a giraffe, is highly mobile. To put it simply, the controls in Castle on the Coast are wonderful. Castle on the Coast has a very soft and sweet, yet defined look that makes me feel deeply nostalgic.

The presentation still captures a really fantastic tone, though, making me feel an unusual childlike whimsy that I don’t see games successfully tap into all that often. Castle on the Coast has a certain low-budget charm to it, with angular character models that remind me of the Nintendo 64 era. The story is fully voice-acted with copious cutscenes. One of the kids asks George to find the four keystones necessary to open the way so that they can go apologize and attempt to get on the same page. They’ve locked off their residence at the top of the tower and forbidden anyone to enter. Upon entering the castle, we learn that the wizard siblings, Aleandra and Vendrick, have been at odds with the adopted children they’re attempting to care for. The game was made in part to be a therapeutic treatment for the kids there. George is actually the mascot for the Valley Children’s Hospital in Fresno, California. I wish it had more content, but I was still pretty blown away by what this game offers.Ĭastle on the Coast tells the story of a giraffe named George who sails to a, well, it’s in the title. However, this is the closest I’ve seen a 3D platformer come to capturing the mobility-propelled bliss and whimsical level design of the genre’s best in quite some time. It isn’t particularly long, and the length of its individual segments is quite uneven. Castle on the Coast is a collectathon game mostly made by a single person. Simply put, most of them can’t hold a candle to Mario, and I have long since accepted that this is a fish most developers just can’t catch. As much as I love 3D platformers, few of them truly nail the controls.