Castle of the Winds

The boxed re-release.

Castle of the Winds is a computer role-playing game with a traditional fantasy theme developed by SaadaSoft and published by Epic MegaGames for Windows 3 in 1992. The game was released as freeware in 2004. The game uses a traditional dungeon-crawler style, but utilizes the drag-and-drop icon interface of Windows. In the game, you play a character whose home has been destroyed, your foster parents murdered, and, an amulet, which was bequeathed to you from your real father was stolen. You journey into the nearby mine to seek vengeance only to discover that you were supposed to have died as well!

When my parents visited someone's house with me in tow, I remember seeing this game being played by their son. Although I recognized immediately that the game was hugely media challenged (the SNES was already out), I was still intrigued by the fantasy theme and fact that the game was released for Windows 3. Years later, I remember seeing icons from the game in a free icon collection, and, later still in the mid-2000s, I remembered the game and found a shareware copy online. I only played a little bit and died early in the game, so I didn't put much effort into it. When I began working on reviews for this Web site, I decided to give the game another try and played it with more dedication.

Status

The game has been released as freeware. I have beaten both episodes on easy difficulty.

Review

• Overall: 5/10
• Best Version: Windows 3

Good

• The game is well-scripted; it uses complex and poetic language.
• I like that the game lets you play male or female.
• It's kind of cool that the game lets you rename all of your items.
• The wide variety of monsters, items, traps, spells, minibosses, etc. keeps the game fresh for quite awhile.
• The difficulty setting adds a little replay value for those who want to punish themselves.

Bad

• Having to use the keypad for movement is uncomfortable, and using diagonal movement on a square grid is always problematic. The designer should have eliminated diagonal movement.
• The stores rarely stock items worth buying. You usually find your best gear in the dungeon, leaving you with nothing to spend your growing wealth on. By the end of the first episode, I had enough money to buy out every shop in the game, but none of them had a single item better than my existing gear. At the end of the second episode, I had over 1,000,000 copper with nothing to buy. Also, stores continue to sell very low-end equipment even near the end of the game. I'm not going to buy a normal club to replace my enchanted bastard sword, so why show it to me?
• The unidentified and possibly cursed items was a neat idea in the early 1980s, but now it's really just pointless busy work. No player is going to risk equipping or using an unidentified item, so it just adds a couple extra steps to each item you pick up.
• Experience needed to increase levels doubles each level, so, by the time you reach level 12, it begins to take a really long time to raise levels. The designer should have used a linear or gradual curve system instead.
• Because the strength of each weapon or armor isn't displayed in the menus, you have to repeatedly consult the help file to see which items are superior, which is a bit annoying. Also, it's impossible to know how much an enchantment actually helps an item. This should be available for any identified item.
• Some of the armor has only a few upgrades, most of which you get fairly early in the first episode, (cape, bracers, gauntlets, boots). You may find one other update later in the game, but otherwise, these equipment slots never upgrade.
• With only a single town and dungeon, the second episode isn't nearly as interesting as the first.
• The map generator very frequently places secret doors right next to regular doors.
• Undead enemies cause semi-permanent stat loss, which requires you to buy back from a temple or from potions. Again, this isn't fun, it's pointless busy work.
• Because levels are generated randomly, the location you'll show up when you take a stair case is entirely random on the lower level, which is a bit silly.
• The way to end the first episode is not made clear, and requires a bit of experimentation.
• A lot of the potions have such specific effects that they're not worth keeping on hand (like resist cold).

Ugly

• The graphics are terrible. I understand that Windows 3 had a limited color palette, and the game only uses 32x32 icons for everything, but a skilled artist would have made the game much more interesting to look at. Animation is limited to spells, and isn't that great either.
• The game completely lacks sound and music which just wasn't acceptable in 1993. One of the benefits of Windows was the compatibility of audio devices, which should have lead to more music and sound, and sound cards had been out for years at this time.
• Most of the game is busy work. I rarely feel like I'm adventuring or even on a quest.

Media

Boxes

The game was originally published by Epic Megagames without a box, but, when it was re-released a couple years later by Monkey Business, boxes were made for the two episodes, both were terrible looking.

• 

  The Monkey Business box. It's pretty awful. The game is not set in the time of the dinosaurs, and the game doesn't feature pterodactyls.

• 

  The box for the second episode is a little better, but still ugly and generic.

Graphics

• 

  Graphics sheet.

Fan Art

• 

  Improved graphics by JinnDEvil. This gives you an idea of how good the graphics could have looked.

Download

This download includes the shareware versions 1.0, 1.0a, and 1.1, and the registered version 1.1a. The full version of the game was released as freeware by the developer in 1998.

• Download (Info) - All versions.

Credits

Role	Staff
Designer, Programmer, Writer	Rick Saada
Additional Designers	Paul Canniff, Ben Goetter, Don Hacherl, Jeff McBride
Graphics	Paul Canniff
Additional Help and Story Text	Ben Goetter

Links

   

• strategywiki.org/wiki/Castle_of_the_Winds - StrategyWiki.