Sticky Castle Review
In this deceptively easy-looking action game from Leon Schrijvers, Sticky Castle has players star as a ball of slime jumping through a castle to free their queen. This is the only game released by the developer to date, so players are experiencing a brand-new developer and new ideas.
Sticky Castle is full of enemies, obstacles and traps for players to navigate through to reach the top of the tower and rescue their queen. While the tap-and-splat game seems easy, players have to watch everything and jump quickly to avoid all of the obstacles that appear.
A Sticky Castle Requires Sticky Jumping
When players start the game, they go through a short tutorial on jumping from wall to wall and how to defeat enemies. The game will tell players to tap when the arrow is pointed in a direction they want to jump, and then the slime is suddenly stuck to the wall with a nice splat.
Players also have to be careful not to jump too high or too far, as the slime will just fall right back down and could land on anything.
Since the arrow keeps moving, it is easy to misclick and put yourself in a bind. On multiple occasions, I would click a second too late and end up upside down instead of on a wall.
In the worst-case scenario, players will misclick and go backwards, landing themselves right into the hot lava. This creates an extra challenge for the players and makes them more cautious of their surroundings.
While the players are jumping, they will encounter chests on the ledges. These chests contain several things, but the most common are coins. The coins can be used in the shop to buy powerups to aid their journey to save the sticky queen, or to buy new characters to jump with.
New Enemies
Throughout the game, some new enemies show up at different points. These range from common to legendary and can pop up anytime in the game. The game even has a small log to help players keep track of the enemies they have encountered.
But it does not help because all the enemies are defeated similarly: by jumping on them. The enemies can fight back a little bit but are usually harmless to the players.
There are also several different traps for players to encounter, which are encountered around level 50. These include spikes, rolling rocks covered in spikes and the constant lava that threatens the player.
The lava is always beneath the player, ready to catch them if they fall. Even when the lava is not noticeable, it can send up a spurt to surprise the player and remind them to keep moving forward.
Nothing Really Changes
While new enemies and quests pop up, the game stays the same tap and splat as in the beginning. Even the landings that the players are jumping to and from stay in the same few positions, as there is not a lot of ability to create new positions in the narrow corridor.
The power-ups and enemies stay the same, with the same ones popping up more than new ones ever appearing. Since the game is still new, developers have plenty to work with and may eventually make changes to the game.
But for now, the game remains an easy tap-and-splat game for players that want an easy background game. Hopefully players will get more from the developers one day, but no one is sure when those updates may happen.
