Journey through the savage lands and defeat the evil warlock before he summons the demon in Demon Castle, a Castlevania-inspired Pico-8 game.
Mush‘s Demon Castle is a wonderful little browser game which channels a lot of the pace of classic 8-bit platformers. I can’t say that I have played much of the early Castlevania titles — I am arguably more of a Wonder Boy fan — however it is easy to recognise a lot of the elements which made those games a success in Demon Castle.
Your quest is simple, a string of areas connect the forest (presumably outside your village) to a warlock’s castle which sits propped on top of a dusty wasteland monolith to the east. Weighty movement, similar to cinematic platformers like Another World and Flashback, lofty jumps and a sweeping whip attack are the tools which you make us of throughout your journey. Well, that and a little ingenuity — the more vigilant explorers will find hidden areas as well as a crypt key and three stones of sealing.
The latter two items in that list are required for the true ending of the game. The stones are littered through various levels, making the path which you choose important to gaining the true ending. I say choose because after most of the levels you get a decision between which path to take next.
What else is there to say about Demon Castle? It’s a nice little five minute experience which is fully feature complete, it is also extremely forgiving. If you do die against any of the enemies, or fall from the map, then you simply respawn at the entry point to the level with a full health-bar again. There’s no punishment for these deaths and there’s no life count, so you can totally set your own pace as you progress through the game.
The Demon Castle cart can be played in your browser over on its Pico-8 page.
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