Genre: Brawler
Developer: Hunter Studio
Publisher: Hunter Studio

Authentic, adjective: not false or copied; genuine; real. Contemporary "indie" games are like the dorky parents who-- surprise!-- show up at a party wearing a backwards baseball cap, throwing out thirty years out-of-date slang, with their kids desperately trying to shove them out the door without hurting their feelings. Indie game makers try so hard to make games which are happy, sad, or spooky, but the efforts are so embarrassingly out of touch that one can scarcely play them without groaning. And that sums up Lost Castle, with its gape-jawed goblins and fifty cent Halloween candy bucket character designs.

If the graphics are cover-the-eyes awkward, things don't get any better for Lost Castle in the aural department. Things start out promisingly with the tinkling piano dancing title screen song, but come totally unravelled as the actual gameplay begins; rather than make music which generates an actual atmosphere, it's as if the composer thought to himself, "Look mom, I can make music which is so self-aware that it pretends to generate an atmosphere! Aren't I so clever?" The sound effects are a similar story, with the goblin "cries" at the first boss forming a perfectly cringe-worthy microcosm.

Where Lost Castle's aesthetic design falls flat on its face, there is an interesting gameplay flow buried beneath: nominally, Lost Castle is a rogue-like brawler, except than when death inevitably comes to the player, accumulated points can be spent levelling up tiles on a skill tree. It's not a totally original concept-- especially because the points are called "souls", *sigh*-- but it does lend the game a "one more try" sensibility. It's a shame then that the stages are dull left-to-right affairs, against enemies with equally dull and repetitive attack patterns.

The sooner this absolutely ludicrous "avante-garde" period of pseudo-game design ends, the sooner people can get back to making honest games, which actually connect with the players versus pathetically stroking the developers' fragile paper-thin egos. This reviewer thinks-- hopes-- that there are some developers out there with actual talent, but games like Lost Castle are not doing the industry or its (once, perhaps) admirers any favors. Even from a mere mechanic standpoint, this title is absolute light years from the genre's best, like "Streets of Rage 2" or even the thirty-plus years' old, 8-bit "River City Ransom". This is called progress?