Alicia and Greg set off with their friends one Halloween night to look for a house in the forest where they could stock up on goodies. Upon reaching the house, Greg and Alicia's friends are turned into stone by a bogeyman. To save their friends, the two heroes must enter the world of the dead. In order to find their friends and set them free, they need to make it through cemeteries, haunted houses and sinister laboratories. Only one person at a time is allowed to enter the world of the dead, so Alicia and Greg must take turns in order to make their way through the danger that awaits them. Friends like the Goblin and Jack O'Lantern will teach them magic tricks that will help them to overcome obstacles along the way. They must find the Mad Scientist's laboratory to get their friends home safe and sound.
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In the spirit of the season, I've been dabbling with a few horror or horror inspired titles here and there, though it dawned on me that I'm not too familiar with Halloween themed games that aren't terrifying. Off the top of my head, there are the two Costume Quests, some cartoon franchises I've seen on Cartoon Network like Courage the Cowardly Dog, Scooby Doo, and the Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, and then I Spy Spooky Mansion? That said, my friend Bubbles and I were talking about the Gamecube library and how there were still a ton of obscure titles that we needed to dabble with, and Spirits & Spells (better known as Castleween in Europe) came up. So since I've been a bit crunched for time lately finishing up obligations and it's from my favorite era of gaming, I thought... why not?
I won't go too much into detail about the story, as it's mostly inconsequential; the gist of it is that you play as these two kids entering the world of the dead after their idiot friends got punked and had their souls taken away by the Boogeyman for visiting a haunted house in the woods. I really thought kids should know better by now, but I suppose there's some degree of plausible deniability involved. Anyways, the game stresses that you can only play as one kid at a time due to arbitrary entry limits, and you'll have to swap between the two as you go along. The girl, Alicia, is dressed as a witch and can throw her hat as an attack; she can also skate on ice and activate ice pumpkins to change the environment, and later on can charge to duck under obstacles and do a spinny hat attack around her. On the other hand, the boy, Greg, is dressed like a little devil, and has a pitchfork slash as an attack; he can jump through fire and later gains access to a super jump after charging and a ground slam.
What's more important is that this game is actually pretty challenging. I originally imagined that the game was going to be an open-world 3D platformer, but instead it's actually a very linear 3D platformer obstacle course in the vein of Crash Bandicoot, and there are tons of pits, traps, enemies, beams, all out to get your ass. Anything hostile that touches you will instantly end your life and send you back to the nearest checkpoint, as will using the wrong character for the wrong type of terrain (Greg will die from touching ice and Alicia will die from touching fire), which is not always obvious for reasons explained later. There's a lot of precision platforming as well, and there's little leeway in jumping and landing; you have to be very clearly above the platform when landing (i.e. no ledge grabbing or sliding above the lip), otherwise you will bump into the side and fall to your doom. Some enemies can be taken out, but a few (like the falling birds) cannot and have to be avoided entirely. This isn't an easy task either, because the limitations on the attacks & hitboxes become very obvious; Alicia cannot throw her hat while in midair while Greg's pitchfork slash appears to hit all around him but in fact does not cover behind him (so good luck fighting ghosts that chase you). And finally, there are fairies that you can collect as a "shield" to take a single hit for you, though many will require you to venture slightly out of the way into potentially more danger just to get them, and fairies will not prevent you from instantly dying when falling into pits or death water.
I'll quickly talk about the lives system and swapping system too as a minor gripe. The only collectibles in the game are hearts (extra lives), coins, and fairies. You can gain extra lives from collecting 100 coins or hearts that can either be hidden a little bit away from the path or directly in the obstacle course as a sort of reward, but you absolutely need coins nonetheless to gain extra swaps. That's because the amount of times you can swap per level is actually limited (something the game doesn't tell you) and you can only regain swaps from each additional checkpoint (+1 swap) and collecting enough coins (this figure I don't know unfortunately). So there is a chance that you can essentially get softlocked if you swap too much prematurely and get stuck on the wrong character when needing to traverse certain obstacles, and be forced to lose a life to teleport back to an old checkpoint and get your swaps back. Additionally, the "game over" state is kinda strange, because instead of resetting you from the beginning of the level with three lives like that of what you had when starting the game, it resets you from the beginning of the level with only one life. You actually have to exit out of the game, reload the save file, and then you'll be spawned back into the level you exited from with three lives to start. Not doing so means that you'll risk dying again from another obstacle; if you don't end up collecting any spare lives from there, you'll forfeit any checkpoint progress and still be locked into one life at the beginning of the level. I'm guessing this is just a developer oversight, but since this game can get quite tough, it's more likely to occur than you'd think.
Now, most of the above difficulty isn't too bad strictly speaking, but I do take particular issue with a couple of elements that bring the difficulty to levels of unfair in many instances: specifically, the camera. One of the classic rules of thumb for figuring out if something is a good 3D platformer or not is checking the efficacy of the camera and well, Castleween fails this test in every possible regard. I don't know how they did it, but in almost every instance of 3D platforming, they chose the worst fixed camera angle imaginable. When you need to move forward (i.e. into the screen), the camera is pointed straight at the ground, so the character is uncomfortably close to the top of the screen and you can't see what you're walking or jumping into. When you need to backtrack and move towards the screen, the camera is pointed upwards towards the sky, and so you can't see what's below you while jumping towards the foreground. And when you're moving from side to side (the 2.5D perspective), the camera will be pointed away from the intended direction of movement so you'll be constantly blind jumping across gaps. You often can't take your time with these jumps either, because this game sure loves its falling platforms that force you to react on the fly despite the horrid camera angles and narrow FOV lest you fall into the pit of doom. And as if that weren't bad enough, the game loves to drop frames whenever more than 3 moving elements on screen are present (that's actually both an exaggeration and not an exaggeration, this game has horrible performance) and it is very noticeable since the game is normally capped at 30 FPS. Oh, and the camera perspective will bob up and down when jumping across platforms going into/out of the screen or up/down cliffs, and it's very easy to get some degree of motion sickness when combined with the frame drops. Finally, the awkward camera angles make it quite difficult to perceive depth when jumping forward in the direction of into the screen, and I lost count of how many times I died from falling into pits due to unperceived platform ledges and misjudging the distance. All I'm saying is, I feel a bit bad complaining about Rayman 2's often horrible camera angles after this experience and I think I'll be a lot more forgiving of shaky and stiff camera handling going forward compared to the new rock bottom I think I've hit from playing this.
What else... the game's presentation is pretty typical for its time and has the usual blocky textures and jagged shadows, though it definitely hasn't aged as well graphically as many of its GC and PS2 peers. I do like the kitschy cartoony enemies and the exaggerated fantasy obstacle course hazards, though if I'm being real nitpicky, I could have used a few more swinging axes and lasers beams. The soundtrack is generally pleasant and hits the right tone of playful "spooky" tunes, though the actual loops are a bit short (maybe a few minutes long at most) and it's very noticeable when the loops end and begins anew abruptly throughout a level. It also doesn't help that some of the themes are reused, just as almost all of the levels appear twice, just with different and often tougher obstacles the second time. The exception to this is near the end, where a factory level is played in reverse while running away from a demon robot as a nice wrinkle to the formula. There are some mini-bosses but they're mostly just simple variations of dodging a close attack and then striking back until they die or activating pumpkins, and a couple of them appear twice (or more) as well with little variation. And finally, the 2nd to last level and the boss have no checkpoints, and take quite some time to complete with tons of hazards thrown in the way, so it's a bit of a grind memorizing all of the patterns and obstacles to get the "perfect" run to finish them cleanly.
I'd love to tell everyone that this is a great and unfairly maligned hidden gem perfect for this time of year, but unfortunately, I can't really think of any convincing reasons why anyone would want to play through this nowadays; if the intended audience was for kids, then why is the game so difficult? It took me a couple of days to get through this title that's really only just above two hours in a longplay, and I definitely can't see any kid wanting to spend hours grinding through the final two levels. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that the developer, Kalisto Entertainment, declared bankruptcy in 2002, shortly after releasing Spirits & Spells. Regardless, it was still an interesting product of its time and I'm always down to try wacky and more niche titles of this era, especially ones that Bubbles has played through. Hope you're doing well buddy, happy Halloween!
I won't go too much into detail about the story, as it's mostly inconsequential; the gist of it is that you play as these two kids entering the world of the dead after their idiot friends got punked and had their souls taken away by the Boogeyman for visiting a haunted house in the woods. I really thought kids should know better by now, but I suppose there's some degree of plausible deniability involved. Anyways, the game stresses that you can only play as one kid at a time due to arbitrary entry limits, and you'll have to swap between the two as you go along. The girl, Alicia, is dressed as a witch and can throw her hat as an attack; she can also skate on ice and activate ice pumpkins to change the environment, and later on can charge to duck under obstacles and do a spinny hat attack around her. On the other hand, the boy, Greg, is dressed like a little devil, and has a pitchfork slash as an attack; he can jump through fire and later gains access to a super jump after charging and a ground slam.
What's more important is that this game is actually pretty challenging. I originally imagined that the game was going to be an open-world 3D platformer, but instead it's actually a very linear 3D platformer obstacle course in the vein of Crash Bandicoot, and there are tons of pits, traps, enemies, beams, all out to get your ass. Anything hostile that touches you will instantly end your life and send you back to the nearest checkpoint, as will using the wrong character for the wrong type of terrain (Greg will die from touching ice and Alicia will die from touching fire), which is not always obvious for reasons explained later. There's a lot of precision platforming as well, and there's little leeway in jumping and landing; you have to be very clearly above the platform when landing (i.e. no ledge grabbing or sliding above the lip), otherwise you will bump into the side and fall to your doom. Some enemies can be taken out, but a few (like the falling birds) cannot and have to be avoided entirely. This isn't an easy task either, because the limitations on the attacks & hitboxes become very obvious; Alicia cannot throw her hat while in midair while Greg's pitchfork slash appears to hit all around him but in fact does not cover behind him (so good luck fighting ghosts that chase you). And finally, there are fairies that you can collect as a "shield" to take a single hit for you, though many will require you to venture slightly out of the way into potentially more danger just to get them, and fairies will not prevent you from instantly dying when falling into pits or death water.
I'll quickly talk about the lives system and swapping system too as a minor gripe. The only collectibles in the game are hearts (extra lives), coins, and fairies. You can gain extra lives from collecting 100 coins or hearts that can either be hidden a little bit away from the path or directly in the obstacle course as a sort of reward, but you absolutely need coins nonetheless to gain extra swaps. That's because the amount of times you can swap per level is actually limited (something the game doesn't tell you) and you can only regain swaps from each additional checkpoint (+1 swap) and collecting enough coins (this figure I don't know unfortunately). So there is a chance that you can essentially get softlocked if you swap too much prematurely and get stuck on the wrong character when needing to traverse certain obstacles, and be forced to lose a life to teleport back to an old checkpoint and get your swaps back. Additionally, the "game over" state is kinda strange, because instead of resetting you from the beginning of the level with three lives like that of what you had when starting the game, it resets you from the beginning of the level with only one life. You actually have to exit out of the game, reload the save file, and then you'll be spawned back into the level you exited from with three lives to start. Not doing so means that you'll risk dying again from another obstacle; if you don't end up collecting any spare lives from there, you'll forfeit any checkpoint progress and still be locked into one life at the beginning of the level. I'm guessing this is just a developer oversight, but since this game can get quite tough, it's more likely to occur than you'd think.
Now, most of the above difficulty isn't too bad strictly speaking, but I do take particular issue with a couple of elements that bring the difficulty to levels of unfair in many instances: specifically, the camera. One of the classic rules of thumb for figuring out if something is a good 3D platformer or not is checking the efficacy of the camera and well, Castleween fails this test in every possible regard. I don't know how they did it, but in almost every instance of 3D platforming, they chose the worst fixed camera angle imaginable. When you need to move forward (i.e. into the screen), the camera is pointed straight at the ground, so the character is uncomfortably close to the top of the screen and you can't see what you're walking or jumping into. When you need to backtrack and move towards the screen, the camera is pointed upwards towards the sky, and so you can't see what's below you while jumping towards the foreground. And when you're moving from side to side (the 2.5D perspective), the camera will be pointed away from the intended direction of movement so you'll be constantly blind jumping across gaps. You often can't take your time with these jumps either, because this game sure loves its falling platforms that force you to react on the fly despite the horrid camera angles and narrow FOV lest you fall into the pit of doom. And as if that weren't bad enough, the game loves to drop frames whenever more than 3 moving elements on screen are present (that's actually both an exaggeration and not an exaggeration, this game has horrible performance) and it is very noticeable since the game is normally capped at 30 FPS. Oh, and the camera perspective will bob up and down when jumping across platforms going into/out of the screen or up/down cliffs, and it's very easy to get some degree of motion sickness when combined with the frame drops. Finally, the awkward camera angles make it quite difficult to perceive depth when jumping forward in the direction of into the screen, and I lost count of how many times I died from falling into pits due to unperceived platform ledges and misjudging the distance. All I'm saying is, I feel a bit bad complaining about Rayman 2's often horrible camera angles after this experience and I think I'll be a lot more forgiving of shaky and stiff camera handling going forward compared to the new rock bottom I think I've hit from playing this.
What else... the game's presentation is pretty typical for its time and has the usual blocky textures and jagged shadows, though it definitely hasn't aged as well graphically as many of its GC and PS2 peers. I do like the kitschy cartoony enemies and the exaggerated fantasy obstacle course hazards, though if I'm being real nitpicky, I could have used a few more swinging axes and lasers beams. The soundtrack is generally pleasant and hits the right tone of playful "spooky" tunes, though the actual loops are a bit short (maybe a few minutes long at most) and it's very noticeable when the loops end and begins anew abruptly throughout a level. It also doesn't help that some of the themes are reused, just as almost all of the levels appear twice, just with different and often tougher obstacles the second time. The exception to this is near the end, where a factory level is played in reverse while running away from a demon robot as a nice wrinkle to the formula. There are some mini-bosses but they're mostly just simple variations of dodging a close attack and then striking back until they die or activating pumpkins, and a couple of them appear twice (or more) as well with little variation. And finally, the 2nd to last level and the boss have no checkpoints, and take quite some time to complete with tons of hazards thrown in the way, so it's a bit of a grind memorizing all of the patterns and obstacles to get the "perfect" run to finish them cleanly.
I'd love to tell everyone that this is a great and unfairly maligned hidden gem perfect for this time of year, but unfortunately, I can't really think of any convincing reasons why anyone would want to play through this nowadays; if the intended audience was for kids, then why is the game so difficult? It took me a couple of days to get through this title that's really only just above two hours in a longplay, and I definitely can't see any kid wanting to spend hours grinding through the final two levels. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that the developer, Kalisto Entertainment, declared bankruptcy in 2002, shortly after releasing Spirits & Spells. Regardless, it was still an interesting product of its time and I'm always down to try wacky and more niche titles of this era, especially ones that Bubbles has played through. Hope you're doing well buddy, happy Halloween!