CastlevaniaRL

By: Derek Yu

On: August 20th, 2007

Slash, who runs the wonderful Temple of the Roguelike, wrote to inform me that version 1.26 of his CastlevaniaRL is finished! The game has been out a while, but a crashing bug with the graphical version kept me from posting about it. Now that is totally fixed and the game is very much playable in both ASCII or tiles!

CastlevaniaRL remains very true to the series it’s based off, and it’s both a blessing and a curse (pun?), since it kind of compromises both Castlevania games and Roguelike games, in my opinion. At its best, CastlevaniaRL can be a fun and fast-paced RL, filled with awesome shout-outs to the original games, and at it’s worst, it mixes the linearity of action games with the complexity of Roguelikes.

A good example of this problem, I think, is Stage 2, when you are forced to cross a very long, narrow, Castlevania-esque bridge, guarded by mermen and skeletons. Here, the possibilities for exploration and tactical strategy that make RL’s so interesting are diminished, and yet the controls remain cumbersome. Having to jump over a gap in the bridge (by first pressing “j” and then choosing a direction for my jump) feels like something I’m forced to do simply because Castlevania had me do it, and not because it serves the game’s design.

Still, CastlevaniaRL has many, many great things going for it, including some really interesting class options and a beautiful graphical tileset. The way Slash handled movement between different elevations is awesome, too. And at it’s heart, it’s a fun game that’s simple enough for a beginner to get into, but with enough challenge and variety to interest longer-time players. But in order to reach “classic” status, I think there needs to be more focus on balancing the game to be a Roguelike over being true to Castlevania.