When Jordan Mechner created the original Prince of Persia in 1989, he had inadvertently spawned an entire sub-genre of platforming. What made it different from other platformers was an emphasis on weighty and realistic movement, and exploration that required careful steps instead of fast reflexes.

The Eternal Castle Remastered by Leonard Menchiari, Daniele Vicinanzo, Giulio Perrone. Windows/Mac/$10/4 hours 'The Eternal Castle REMASTERED is an ambitious attempt to modernize an old classic in order to keep its memory alive. The Eternal Castle REMASTERED is already available on now on the American eShop and Steam but will released for the Nintendo Switch in Europe on August 21 st. 22 of July 2020 – TFL Studios are proud to announce the European release of The Eternal Castle REMASTERED on Nintendo Switch ( eshop link, trailer ).

• The Eternal Castle REMASTERED is an ambitious attempt to modernize an old classic in order to keep its memory alive. Through detailed research and hard work, the production team tried to expand.
• The Eternal Castle REMASTERED is not a remaster of anything, but you think it is because of its commitment to 2-bit CGA graphics. Then you realize how foolish you were by not realizing the.
• The Eternal Castle REMASTERED, purporting to be a remaster of a 1987 CGA-palette DOS game, is a cinematic action-adventure platformer in the vein of Another World, Prince of Persia,.

The appeal of the “cinematic platformer” lies in puzzle-centric gameplay, and its tendency to have cinematic flair in its presentation. Shortly after Jordan Mechner’s opus came out, Another World would up the ante by leaning in hard with its story telling. Intricate in-game cutscenes impressed gamers, and depicted a story without relying on any dialogue or text to convey itself.

The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED], a game that was inspired by rumors, bald-faced lies, and half-remembered dreams is not coy about its influences. It aims to deliver something authentic to the experience you would have gotten somewhere in between Prince of Persia and Another World.

The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED]
Developer: TFL Studios
Publisher: TFL Studios
Platforms: Windows PC, Nintendo Switch (reviewed)
Release Date: May 15, 2020
Players: 1
Price: $9.99

The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED] is not a remaster of anything, but you think it is because of its commitment to 2-bit CGA graphics. Then you realize how foolish you were by not realizing the obvious, because aping off retro aesthetics is what indie devs do to cater to nostalgia.

With The Eternal Castle, things are a bit different. It kind of feels like the developer is drawing inspiration from misremembering and mixing up specific games together.

The way how vague the story is told, with anachronistic imagery meeting sci-fi and the surreal vistas meeting the incredibly low-fi presentation, makes the experience feel like lost game from the 80s.

The pixel art is very rough, seemingly by design, to make The Eternal Castle seem more authentic to the era it is from. It is shocking that there are no CRT filters included at all.

Everything is very raw with stray or empty pixels strewn assets. There is a dirty and gritty quality to the setting and compounded with the limited two color pallet per scene, it would be easy to believe the meta narrative the designer has constructed.

The Eternal Castle 1987

The retro synth hum that permeates the ambiance of every scene would be a cliché in something more polished or slick looking. The way The Eternal Castle uses its music only further adds to the authenticity of being some kind of forgotten late 80s PC platformer.

The 2-bit CGA aesthetics have to make liberal use of inky, crushed black real estate, because actual CGA processors back in the day relied on black being a color. This shrouds The Eternal Castle in shadows and silhouettes, with only highlights giving the impression of defined shapes.

This can lead to visuals becoming utterly indecipherable, since the overall art direction is also intended to be very scratchy and crude. The protagonist can become completely lost and will have no defined silhouette, with only a few speculator highlights to give the impression of their place on screen. The effect can make the player-character look like a guy wearing a mo-cap suit with dots.

In one area that relies on stealth to bypass, there are patrolling monsters. Other than a few pixels to indicate their frame and a few glowing eyes, it can be troubling to identify which way they are facing or about to face.

Thankfully, The Eternal Castle is not so polished that the A.I. can be easily circumvented by running passed this part. It does not always work, but it’s blessing in disguise that the developer failed to play test this sequence.

The Eternal Castle is designed around the player choosing which stage they wish to play after the tutorial level. Outside of the aforementioned stealth sequence, there is an area that will test your skills and patience at hand to hand combat. Another area is focused on using guns and after completing all three areas, the final level opens up that puts all skills to the test.

Between solving some puzzles that can be figured out by process of elimination and timing jumps while running, The Eternal Castle can feel pretty standard as far as cinematic platformers go. There are even some traps and pitfalls that are lifted from Prince of Persia‘s keep, like the horizontal guillotine and spring spikes.

Everything is mostly functional except for the crapshoot melee combat. Unlike similar games, the protagonist has limited stamina and is able has two dedicated attack buttons; punching and kicking. There is no technique to the action; just smack some boys and try to abuse the i-frames from rolling.

Aside from sluggish playability, the frame rate can tank hard which truly makes this feel like a game programmed in the 80s. This frustration is further compounded by the way the game’s settings tend to change every time you die, as if it’s mocking you for wanting to play with a specific control set-up.

Perhaps it is a bug that will be addressed in a future patch, but it is extremely tedious to have to re-adjust the settings in a game where trial and error is part of the experience. Even opening menus and making selections has a long delay and pause, which at first could be mistaken for a crash.

When thankfully, The Eternal Castle works, it is acceptable, but hardly riveting. The scenarios are milquetoast and verge on being overly drawn out, which is unusual for a game that is as short as this.

The settings clash with one another- as if there are three or four different games crammed into one. In one area you’ll be skulking around in a graveyard with ghouls running around, and the next you’ll be in some arena fighting a dozen boys with clubs and axes.

In a way the complete incongruity of the scenarios does add to the surrealism of the adventure, but actual adventure games from the late 80s and early 90s where much more cohesive than this.

The Eternal Castle is supposed to be some kind of science fiction adventure- at least the intro suggests as much. The story revolves around finding pieces of a space ship, and rescuing what might be your significant other.

It really does come across that the designer wanted to throw everything in that he vaguely remembered from a game he can’t recall. Why would there be a spaceship piece hidden in a graveyard? It never makes any sense.

The Eternal Castle is ultimately not worth the eye-strain, and better options like Another World: 20th Anniversary Edition or Flashback exist on Nintendo Switch.

Only the most desperate who are easily swayed by retro visuals will be impressed by The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED]. With a bit of polish, this could be an interesting and worthwhile cinematic platformer.

The foundation is much to shaky, and substantial chunks of the game would require some redesigning. Even the controls need some refinement and simplification, like reducing the combat to one button and having run be mapped to a face button.

If this was the “remastered” version of The Eternal Castle, I would hate to see what the original was like. The best thing about this was the marketing gimmick and the music.

The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED] was reviewed on Nintendo Switch using a review copy provided by TFL Studios. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here.

Alternate History

HIGH Mindblowing visual style, great intrigue.

LOW The game crashed before I saw the ending.

WTF I get it’s an artistic choice, but these fonts need to be readable.

The Eternal Castle Remastered is a new game inspired by old ones — they might be unfamiliar to younger players, but those of us with a few gray hairs will remember classics like Prince of Persia (1989), Out of This World (1991), Flashback (1992) and others. Upon those bones, a small team of three developers have wrapped intense visuals and a touch of modern sensibility, creating a product that is both new and old, familiar and strange, all at once.

The experience works if taken as a piece that exists on the strength of its visuals and tone, rather than the details of its plot because, frankly, the story is more than a bit vague. The opening text setting things up is illegible, but it soon becomes clear that each of the five areas in The Eternal Castle Remastered is effectively a self-contained sidestory that doesn’t have much bearing on the others — and this is largely fine. While I value solid narrative work, the devs seem more concerned with delivering different play variations on the core concept, and it works.

Mechanically, TECR has players going (mostly) left to right while platforming and engaging in a very specific type of old-school combat. Those who haven’t encountered the titles mentioned above will likely be put off by how it feels – those games were rotoscoped and prioritized smooth animation over responsiveness and control. So much so, in fact, that it interfered with gameplay. Back then, players would have to account for how long a jump animation would take and then press the button far enough in advance that the character would go through the motion and jump at the right time.

These uninterruptible, extended animations aren’t used much these days and I haven’t missed them. That said, it’s clear what the devs are going for, and in this context it’s largely fine since checkpoints are generally frequent enough to avoid frustration and there aren’t many places in TECR where the chunky, sluggish combat is required apart from a few boss fights.

There are 30 “fragments” to collect which contribute to a secret ending, in addition to optional gear items which are scattered throughout the world. They give the player gifts like more stamina, more life, better aiming and reduced presence when the character ducks. These things add a nice level of complexity that TECR‘s predecessors usually didn’t offer, and players who seek these things out will be duly rewarded. That said, some of them are too easy to miss – not generally a problem, but players can’t revisit levels if they miss one.

Now, with that out of the way, I have to quit burying the lede and say that while all of that stuff I’ve just outlined is fine, the graphics and style of The Eternal Castle Remastered are absolutely what sells it, and honestly, this game is a knockout. Every frame is screenshot-worthy thanks to high-contrast colors, chunky shading and a perfectly understated and abstract level of detail. The devs do a lot with a little, and in this case, less is certainly more.

Walking through this saturated world, the bare outline of a thing shows more than seeing it rendered in photorealistic detail, and the way color and lighting shift is fantastic. One scene in particular had me coming from a brightly-lit outside into a dark tunnel illuminated with hot pink, and the push of a button flooded it with blue and white. Another section took place in a dark lab pulsing with turquoise, and my escape in its elevator was a rising strobe of white, black and red. It’s all wonderfully fluid and smooth, and a dazzling treat for the eye.

The Eternal Castle Remastered For Mac Os

It was the strength of these aesthetics and the fluidity of the animation that caught my attention when I saw the trailer. Playing through it delivered on that promise, and then some. I absolutely love the approach the devs have taken, and I would often linger in a section or walk back and forth between screens just to watch the palette shift, or to examine how the certain things were rendered. Artistically, The Eternal Castle Remastered is superb.

While I’m quite enamored with the whole thing, there’s no doubt that there are rough edges that dull TECR‘s glamour. Apart from the implementation of ‘classic’ mechanics that players will either accept (or not) the Switch code is a bit buggy. I had a couple of crashes that didn’t result in anything more than an annoyed reload, but the worst one happened right as I was about to see the ending — thank god for YouTube. Beyond that, there were times when an enemy’s dropped weapon glitched out of the world and wasn’t usable, and I’ve clipped myself offscreen during a boss fight. Also, there’s a bonus mode unlocked after credits roll that runs poorly — it’s slow and it chugs in a way that the main game does not.

I don’t want to end this review on a down note, though. The fantastic visuals, incredible style and wonderful reimagining of this classic formula captivated me immediately — ironic, since I’ve never been a fan of the games in this basket — and the majority of my time was spent with a smile on my face. My Switch’s memory card is now full of screengrabs, and each level’s variety was strong enough to carry me to the credits without ever feeling bored, or thinking that the experience was running out of gas.

The Eternal Castle Remastered isn’t for everyone and I can easily imagine many prospective players being turned off by the controls or the abstract visuals, but there’s no denying the fact that it’s a strong addition which adds depth to the Switch library, and it comes absolutely recommended to anyone with a taste for those bygone classics or eccentric art-house titles.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Leonard Menchiari, Giulio Perrone and Daniele Vicinanzo. and published by Playsaurus and TFL Studios. It is currently available on PC and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch. Approximately 6 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E10+ and contains Blood and Mild Fantasy Violence. I suspect it’s too abstract and weird for most kids so they likely won’t encounter the content, but I almost think it should get a ‘T’ instead. Despite the stylized visuals, there are some semi-gross animations and it can be a little scary at times. I loved it but I wouldn’t let my little one play this, honestly. There is no salty language and no sexual content.

Colorblind Modes: There are nocolorblind modes available in the options.Also, as a side note, be aware that the visual contrast of colors is quite strong in many scenes and there are also several areas where strobe-like effects are more prominent than in the average videogame.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All information comes via text, although the font vacillates between being somewhat legible to I-can’t-read-this-at-all. The lettering seems like an artistic choice and there’s no way to alter it. On the other hand, the story is fairly confusing and the game can be played entirely without sound as no audio cues are necessary.

The Eternal Castle Remastered Switch

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable. Below is a graphic showing one of the preset configurations, and there are two more although they’re both nearly identical to this, just with the functions swapped.

Brad Gallaway

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