It is the night of Helloween and a mad professor sporting a stereotypical Einstein haircut is experimenting with his latest invention: a worm hole generator. Lightning strikes in just the right (or wrong?) moment and an alien as well as the creatures on its trail along with their space ship are catapulted right into Earth's orbit.
This is where I could like to end the re-telling of the ludicrous plot to our impatient readers. The point and click adventure builds on the most well-worn clichés in the area of ufology and mixes it up with the fairy tale style of the Monkey Island titles so that protagonist Benjamin, although not believable, still comes across as lovable. In his shoes, you will of course be helping this mysterious creature which is being pursued by an evil alien despot who is regularly seen being mean to his underlings. Nevertheless, the adventurer doesn't have to fear for his life: our Benjamin is still the nice boy next door and the only reason for him to die will be of boredom.
For a long time I thought of Grim Fandango as the ‘LucasArts game with the skeletons’, whose appeal was a total mystery to me. Maybe it was because back then, when the game was released, I had been somewhat over-saturated (like many others) by countless adventure games. Also they started copying each other more and more and most of the time provided some awfully boring ideas. Still a game, in which you slip into the role of a bony man, seemed just too silly. In the meantime adventure games are returning again and LucasArts finally closed its gates. So after fifteen years I decided to fill a gap in my knowledge.
Alert: Princess trapped in a dungeon below a castle; hero needed to rescue her! Castle Adventure delivers exactly what it promises: An old-school treasure hunt set first in a forest (where else?), then after a brief interlude in a cave going into a castle and its dungeon where you will encounter a mildly amusing, because completely politically incorrectly portrayed princess. Along the way, you will encounter predominantly undescribed or at least underdescribed locations which you have to map, nice and logical puzzles, mazes and lots of dead ends. To put it another way: It was a delight to play, because it did everything right – if you like this sort of thing which was heavily in style in the 80s.