Only started playing this one once I heard that it was shutting down. It's what it says on the tin, playing Pac-Man on mazes constructed from Google Maps. It sounds like a bit of a mess, but it ended up being a lot of fun. There's some novelty in being able to play Pac-Man near famous monuments or even just by your home. The novelty of generating your own stages wore off after a bit (especially since the game couldn't always generate them depending on the area you chose), but it was also interesting to play levels that others had uploaded.

The real hook of the game, however, was the tour mode. The tour mode had stages handpicked(?) by the developers (from what I can tell they rotated like the tours in Mario Kart Tour), where you also have side objectives which you needed to complete to unlock more levels (eat X ghosts per stage, get X points, etc.). These objectives got a bit annoying on the more difficult levels, but nothing that ever felt unachievable, especially with power ups. Some of those "more difficult" stages also highlighted some of the game's control flaws. Some spots just aren't conducive for Pac-Man mazes, and I'd often be frantically swiping to go the right way to no avail. There were also some spots that definitely looked like you could make a turn, but either couldn't or would just get stuck on the maze geometry. Ghost spawn placements also tended to mean ghosts dominating a portion of the map by default, since there were never going to be any perfectly symmetrical maps. However these issues only truly frustrated me when I was shooting for some of the more difficult challenges later on, and most of the time I was having fun. There's definitely a novelty to playing a bunch of massive and wildly different, if unbalanced, types of mazes. I also really liked the unlockable pixel/voxel replicas of monuments and foods from around the world with fun facts attached. I love these kinds of collectibles and they gave me an extra incentive to keep coming back to the tour stages, and even select user submitted ones as well. There was also some sort of competition mode where you'd compete for the top score on a few stages, and earn badges and currency to buy hats that gave you extra perks. I only played one of these (seems that they updated on a monthly basis), so I can't really say much more other than it was neat.

As a final note, I'm surprised how lenient this game was in terms of monetization, or lack thereof. From what I can tell, this never had microtransactions at all. It only showed you ads after every level or two, and had the usual "watch this ad for an extra life after a game over/get an extra reward" mobile game trappings. There were two currencies, one you earned by watching ads or playing the game and was used for extra power ups. The other was the aforementioned currency that you could only earn through competition mode and could use for upgrades. Between the non-existent buzz for the game and the lack of any monetization besides ads, I can see how this died in little over a year. That being said, I hope this concept can be brought back some day, with a bit more polish on the controls, either as a new mobile game or a side mode in a full console/PC release. This is too good of a concept to let die unceremoniously in a mobile game that practically nobody played.


(No idea how this review turned into an essay, guess I wanted to go in depth with something that's at risk of being semi-lost media. Didn't even have an IGDB listing til I added one about a month ago.)

The car chase segment is really impressive, barely looked like a game at times (though ironically the frame drops broke that immersion a bit). It didn't wow me too much in terms of "this is what games could be like in the future" because of how much it didn't look like a game at all, on top of it just being a tech demo with very limited gameplay. As a visual showcase though, it's pretty neat. I think reading up on how everything in the demo works will give me a better picture of how all of the tech could be implemented into a full game some day.

This game is just a massive bundle of joy. You can feel the devs' passion for this medium in every inch of it. It's a bite-sized collectathon with smooth controls and occasional vehicle sections to spice things up. All of the DualSense's features are put to good use here. Sections that use the adaptive triggers, motion controls, or touchpad control like a dream and don't feel gimmicky or obtrusive at all. The haptic feedback in particular feels like magic the first time you get your hands on it. The game is bursting with charm (Astro waving to you in his idle animation will never not warm my heart) and callbacks to other games or PlayStation hardware. It's an ad, sure, but it's done with enough reverence to not come off that way while playing. The soundtrack is a treat as well, with plenty of catchy tunes and others that make me feel all fuzzy inside. Astro's Playroom is one of those games that reminds me just how much I love gaming. If you have a PS5, make a beeline for this one.

I gave this one another chance after trying it out and dropping it a few years back. I expected to just drop it again, but by playing revision K and using save states I was able to make it to the end. Revision K (and E I believe) drastically reduces the amount of damage you take from enemies. On the easiest possible dip switch settings you'll only take a single point of damage per hit, and only 3 points on the hardest, making K's hardest settings easier than the standard version's easiest. With savestates at the ready just to be safe, K on it's easiest settings is the definitive way to play this. With that in mind though, the reduced damage doesn't fix any of Haunted Castle's other flaws. You'll still be dealing with plenty of trial and error or gotcha moments that a first time player won't see coming, and hordes of enemies in the later levels that feel impossible to wipe out without taking damage (level 3's fleamen and 5's flaming skulls in particular). Hitboxes are also pretty clunky, with enemies damaging you just as they graze by (also caused in part by just how large Simon's sprite is), while attacking enemies at close range usually means they'll just hit you instead. Having only 3 continues, or more accurately, 4 lives, is unusually punishing for a Castlevania game and downright baffling as an arcade game.

All of these marks against the game are a shame, because I can see the workings of a good arcade style Castlevania here. There are a few moments where it clicks and it's satisfying to wail on enemies, and the handful of platforming segments are fine enough. Bosses are alright, although they might be a bit too easy as most fold pretty quickly (minus the rock monster on level 4, who might just be the worst boss in the entire series). Hitboxes aside, Simon controls more or less how he does in CV1 here, minus the controls for getting on and off the stairs being much more finicky than they usually are. The soundtrack is easily the best thing about this game, and while most of it has been remixed in later games, the original compositions are still well worth a listen. Each level has enough setpieces to make each one memorable. Some would become series staples like the crumbling bridge while others would be forgotten, like the weird alternate dimension harpy fight. I'm a bit mixed on the game visually. There isn't anything wrong with the sprite work and animations minus a few oddities, but something about them feels off, like I'm playing a store brand Castlevania instead of the real thing.

With a few more months of development time, Haunted Castle could have been something great. Unfortunately we're left with a very messy Castlevania game with level designs that lack almost everything that makes the series' gameplay satisfying. I can only really recommend this to big fans of the series that are morbidly curious, and even then playing on anything other than the easiest revisions on their easiest settings is probably going to be a miserable experience.