Version number:
Lost Castle
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Official Trailer
What kind of Coop Game is this?
Lost Castle is a side scrolling dungeon (castle) crawler / beat `em up/ brawler in a fantasy setting with intricate loot mechanics and a rogue-lite setup.
Details:
Platform:
Price paid:
10€
Number of people played with:
4
Possible number of players:
Time played so far:
15hrs
Estimated completion rate:
80%, completed the game once, but not new game+
Estimate minimum Age to play:
8
Date game profile was posted:
06/03/2021
Co-Optimus.com Profile for feature info:
Rating
8/10
Why you should coop this:
To be honest: having played this was more or less by accident. We wanted some uncomplicated game that has 4 player online coop and no one was really in the mood for deeper research so we saw the trailer for this and thought “looks like every game ever and might be a fun distracting time-waster to talk over”. I also distinctly remembering that after the trailer I thought the artstyle looked cheap and bad.
I can now say we were wrong with almost every single takeaway from watching the trailer. Re-watching it now I can still see why we thought it was a shallow game but I can now – after having played it – also totally see that it is not shallow. In fact it is a rather good game with a very motivating gameplay loop: You earn souls throughout your run that you have 1 Minute to spend in your skill tree once you failed – so the next run will be a little easier due to your upgrades. To get as far as you can and earn as much souls as you can you are looking for weapons that have a good special attack – these special attacks are quite varied: some weapons conjure healing items, others transform your enemies to frogs and some cast meteors or blizzards. Others again send a black hole to your enemies or make giant crystals fall from the sky. You can unlock more of these when you kill more bosses. For every of the 5 levels there will be one boss that appears at the end – though levels stay roughly the same (some procedural generation) the boss who spawns for a particular levels is a random spawn out of a set of a few (3 maybe?). So you hope that during your run a new boss will spawn and you can learn his attacks and wrestle him down so new items will appear in your future runs. Item combinations are the king here and there is not only weapons but also different armor, as well as healing items and potions that can have a variety of effects. If you have a weapon that suits you well and an Armor that supports this weapon you can get quite powerful. This also means that you have to be cooperative in looting and distributing all the gear amongst your team: your team will be more powerful when you make looting and loadouts also teamplay. When every player in your party is happy with the gear they got the game really clicks and you can fight your way through the game even if you are still under-leveled. We did several runs and the game feels distinctly different every time due to the different weapon combinations and you are always hoping for another loot drop that improves your team’s setup. Some runs seemed really bad and doomed to fail until we found a game changing drop.
Additionally the skill tree is rather elaborate for such a simple seeming game and leveling up really increases your chances to succeed the next run.
The game seems to be geared for very dedicated players who are willing to sink hundreds of hours into this but that wasn’t for us – so after this came apparent we quit and recommend others to just play through the first run and forget about the new game + -like 2nd run.
I can now say we were wrong with almost every single takeaway from watching the trailer. Re-watching it now I can still see why we thought it was a shallow game but I can now – after having played it – also totally see that it is not shallow. In fact it is a rather good game with a very motivating gameplay loop: You earn souls throughout your run that you have 1 Minute to spend in your skill tree once you failed – so the next run will be a little easier due to your upgrades. To get as far as you can and earn as much souls as you can you are looking for weapons that have a good special attack – these special attacks are quite varied: some weapons conjure healing items, others transform your enemies to frogs and some cast meteors or blizzards. Others again send a black hole to your enemies or make giant crystals fall from the sky. You can unlock more of these when you kill more bosses. For every of the 5 levels there will be one boss that appears at the end – though levels stay roughly the same (some procedural generation) the boss who spawns for a particular levels is a random spawn out of a set of a few (3 maybe?). So you hope that during your run a new boss will spawn and you can learn his attacks and wrestle him down so new items will appear in your future runs. Item combinations are the king here and there is not only weapons but also different armor, as well as healing items and potions that can have a variety of effects. If you have a weapon that suits you well and an Armor that supports this weapon you can get quite powerful. This also means that you have to be cooperative in looting and distributing all the gear amongst your team: your team will be more powerful when you make looting and loadouts also teamplay. When every player in your party is happy with the gear they got the game really clicks and you can fight your way through the game even if you are still under-leveled. We did several runs and the game feels distinctly different every time due to the different weapon combinations and you are always hoping for another loot drop that improves your team’s setup. Some runs seemed really bad and doomed to fail until we found a game changing drop.
Additionally the skill tree is rather elaborate for such a simple seeming game and leveling up really increases your chances to succeed the next run.
The game seems to be geared for very dedicated players who are willing to sink hundreds of hours into this but that wasn’t for us – so after this came apparent we quit and recommend others to just play through the first run and forget about the new game + -like 2nd run.
Shortcomings:
We really liked our time and were incredibly motivated throughout. We beat the game once and unlocked the 2nd playthrough and were super motivated to do this one as well and see the story through but after several attempts our enjoyment grinded to a halt. After sometime the levels are getting too repetitive and the amount of souls you get for a run that ends at the final boss is just too low. Also once you have seen most of the weapon combinations the novelty is lost. How often do the devs expect players to play through the same levels? There is something really wrong here, so we highly recommend calling it quits after one complete run because it seems to be the intent of the creators to have you play this for 100s of hours and there is simply not that much meat on this bone. Hopefully an already announced DLC might change this endgame problem.
Another negative we should mention is that if you somehow disconnect from your party you have a problem. There is a reconnect feature that never worked for us and always resulted in everybody losing all they have gained in the run. If one does not try to reconnect at least the players that remained connected can die and use their hard earned souls. These kinds of technical issues are a bummer.
Another negative we should mention is that if you somehow disconnect from your party you have a problem. There is a reconnect feature that never worked for us and always resulted in everybody losing all they have gained in the run. If one does not try to reconnect at least the players that remained connected can die and use their hard earned souls. These kinds of technical issues are a bummer.
Cooperative or Multiplayer Game?
Many games that are listed as Coop are games were you rather play together with players playing simultaneously. The true cooperative element comes in with working together, coordination and good teamwork. Both types are viable and can be great fun. Our aim is to let you know how this game handles this. More on this distinction under “About this Site”.
Cooperation
If the graph is more orange colored the game falls more in the Cooperation category.
Multiplayer
If the graph is more blue colored the game falls more in the Multiplayer category.