Mysterious Castle

Used to play this back on my iPad 2. It’s a great roguelike, with a sprawling world, and most unusually, a party based system. It’s one of those one-person passion projects that often have rough edges (the interface), but have more content and passion than any number of slick, quick corporate money grabs. Some years back, it vanished from the app store, and then was lost, I thought for good, in the 64 bit purge. I was wrong. I was scrolling through my uninstalled software list and I see it again, with a fancy new icon. No way, I think, but yep, it’s the same game. Only now I can use a mouse in iOS 13 and it’s even more fun than I remember. If you like your old school roguelike dungeon crawls mixed with some open world exploring and classic Ultima vibes, with some nicely tactical combat, this is the game you’re looking for. So glad to have it back.

This game is definitely challenging, but worth it. I’ve played through it so many times, both solo and with parties, that I’ve adjusted to my one complaint; the quirky interface. The game is based on the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5e ruleset, so referencing an srd might help explain things. One thing that’s not obvious is that trees, shrubs, and stumps provide cover from enemy attacks. Also, you have the option, when soloing and killed, to reincarnate as the creature that defeated you. This is by far my favorite aspect of this game; demon lords and ancient vampires are the best! Now just waiting for an iOS 11 update so I can get back to adventuring!

The game overall is pretty good. It takes a few tries before you get the hang of it. The UI is very clunky in terms of trying to target the right tile especially when there are things on door archways. But once you can get past the initial problems the game gets a lot more fun.