Darkestville Castle

Darkestville Castle does the adventure point-and-click genre justice. It keeps true to the object hunt playstyle and the "use this object on that object" puzzle-solving design. The game is nicely voice acted and contains plenty of humour in an all-ages environment. The colourful graphics and humour are pleasing and give off a Tim Burton-esque vibe that is fun and rewarding to play.

The Switch isn’t as ideal as I’d hoped, but Darkestville Castle proves that it’s not bad. The title takes a classic formula and provides no twists on it. It makes for a fun and nostalgic experience, but an often tedious one. I keep bringing this series up, but if you liked the Monkey Island games, you’ll almost certainly enjoy Darkestville Castle. In fact, if you’ve always wanted to try one and are allergic to PC gaming, this is not a bad experience on Switch at all. The visuals and humor are worth it, at the very least.

Darkestville Castle’s campaign takes only a few hours to finish, but it’s worth experiencing for the laughs. The Flash-esque animation actually looks wonderful in motion, and the characters sport unique styles that inject personality into the campaign. Sure, it might be a pain to try and use that cursor, but the writing is delightful enough to make it worth the headache. For those wanting to learn a little about how things might look from a villain’s perspective, Darkestville Castle might be just the thing.

If you’re a fan of classic ‘point-and-click’ adventure games like Monkey Island, or even if you have fond memories of those classic Humongous Entertainment titles such as Pajama Sam or Freddie Fish, then Darkestville Castle is worth checking out. Despite the obvious budgetary limitations of the project and associated issues, Darkestville Castle is a delightful point-and-click adventure game that revels in its nostalgic influences without shamelessly reproducing them. It’s also a fun, compelling adventure in its own right and well worth your time.

Darkestville Castle feels at home on the Switch, and with a strong narrative and clever puzzles cements itself as a decent point-and-click adventure, despite some niggles.

If you’re after a point and click adventure game that harkens back to another era of gaming, Darkestville Castle isn’t bad. There is definitely the feel of older adventure games, fans of the Monkey Island series, in particular, will find plenty of nostalgia here. While it does take you back to some of those 90s games, too often it feels like it could’ve left some of it behind.

Darkestville Castle is imaginative and well-written, but the obscurity of the puzzle solutions, unfriendly design choices, and presence of a potentially game breaking bug make it difficult to recommend. If you love retro adventure games and have a high tolerance for difficult puzzles, you might want to check it out. Just back up your save as you go.