kearns@tom.columbia.edu.UUCP (03/21/87)
I have Dark Castles. I liked it for a while, but I have put it away for good. Why? The game designers made some really annoying mistakes. The worst mistake they made is in the screens on the way to the Black Knight. The trouble is that when you die, you invariably get thrown back into the Dungeon. From there you have to slog all the way back up to the main hall. This is no challenge for anyone ready to face the Black Knight, so all it does is replenish your materials (good) and make the game take a boring eternity (bad). Furthermore, it would be nice to be able to save games at different points, so that one would not have to get the Fireball and Shield powers after one has mastered those sections. More intangibly, the game lacks surprises. There is a certain lack of cleverness that I have come to expect in home computer arcade games (for example in the Infocom games, or the great puzzles in Loderunner). It is a shame one can't define one's own boards, as we can in Loderunner. All in all, I am disappointed that I am prevented from killing the Black Knight; stopped not by the forces of evil, but the forces of tedium. -steve p.s. I think the game was worth the money... I got many fun hours of play out of it. But then I "was" an arcade fanatic...