The Sleeping Castle

[elentgirl]

I have just released my latest adveture game, which can be downloaded from the AGS database: The Sleeping Castle

The Sleeping Castle is a point-and-click adventure based upon the Sleeping Beauty legend.  You have to guide a bold Knight through the Thorny Maze surrounding The Sleeping Castle, and find a way into the castle to rescue the sleeping princess.  There are hazards to avoid and challenges to overcome.

 
 

A User Guide with hints and solutions can be downloaded from my website here!

[Shadow1000]

Wow, Elen! The graphics and atmosphere in this game look AMAZING, like many of your previous releases! I can't wait to play when I get a chance.

Congrats on the release!

[Tomags]

Looking great

[Nahuel]

Congratulations on the release going to take a look at it soon!

[sthomannch]

Nicely done, a lot of effort went into this and it looks very good! I liked to play it but needed some of the hints, so it was more a kind of story telling, but enjoyable nonetheless.

[heltenjon]

I have been playing this the last days. I'm not through the game yet, I'm dealing with a fire imp next, and I need my dictionary for that puzzle, I guess.

Let me start off by saying that I'm nominating this game for the Best Programming award, and possibly sound and visuals as well. Some of the puzzles are very intricate, so hats off for making them work! 

There's some things I like and some things I don't like about this game. I knew from going in that some puzzles may be too hard for me, having played Elentgirl's games before. And I'm not a fan of mazes. So I was reluctant when I realized that there would be a lot of wandering about in the overgrown garden outside the castle, fearing I would get lost. And get lost I did. Even with the map, I often took the wrong direction and ended up somewhere else.  I didn't realize for a long time that my usual method of waving the mouse about to look for interactive spots didn't work unless my knight was close to said spot. That oversight made me think that I still needed something in the maze before I could try to solve the combination lock early on. (Which was a great puzzle, by the way.) Now, these are design choices, not necessarily flaws, but they made the already hard maze even harder by not always showing the exits from far off. So first part: puzzles - fun, maze - not fun.

Inside the castle, things got better. I absolutely loved the navigational puzzle of how to reach the other parts of the castle. I also had fun with the chessboard of death (a memory puzzle - okay), until I had to do it again every time I wanted to cross the floor to reach other parts of the building. Part of my frustration is probably because of a bug - see below. On the top floor, I feel quite intimidated by the difficulty of the puzzles, but that's okay. I'll use a walkthrough when needed, and it's nice to try to solve some of your hardest puzzles. I'll admit to solving some with trial and error, and trying to figure out afterwards why that worked. 

There are a couple of walking dead situations in the game, if I'm not mistaken. In the garden,

Spoiler

taking the chalice looks like it locks the player in the garden with no possible escape. There were planty of warnings about this, so I saved before trying it anyway.

[close]

The other I fear is due to a bug. At the chessboard of death,

Spoiler

there seems to be a set number of times to try to solve the level, and after that, the map on the wall sets an automated solution. I ended up with no way to change away from the set solutions and not being able to go to the library. Even if I changed the parameters on the wall, I ended up going back and forth between the stairs and the kitchen. Of course, there may be something else I didn't do, but I had to go back to an earlier save to get past this.

[close]

Thanks for the game! The good puzzles in the castle made up for the maze in my mind. And even if mazes are a big personal drawback for me, I have to admit that the maze in this game has a good justification storywise.

EDIT: Finished it! The final puzzle was more straightforward than I thought. I have to add that I think you have made a great job making Carabosse seem like a powerful villain. Even though she is off-stage, the other characters talk of her, and it's made clear that she's behind all the traps our hero may wander into. The death scenes work to this effect, and also the remains of other adventurers found along the way.

EDIT 2: I can't help but wonder...The incantation for the fire imp is

Spoiler

readable backwards.

[close]

Is this something that was left out of the game? Or just a joke?