Lost Castle / 失落城堡

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Lost Castle / 失落城堡 is a single player and multiplayer hack and slash game. It was developed by Hunter Studio and was released on August 31, 2016. It received mostly positive reviews from players.

Lost Castle is a super cute, super hard action RPG with roguelike elements and randomized dungeons. Brimming with a host of hand drawn, humorous characters and environments that embrace retro action with modern twists. Prologue: In its glory days, Castle Harwood was the heart of a happy land governed by wise and virtuous nobles. But those days are long gone now. Calamity has befallen the…

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77%

Audience ScoreBased on 2,010 reviews

gameplay61 positive mentions

grinding70 negative mentions

Addictive and challenging roguelike beat-em-up with high replayability.
Great variety of weapons, items, enemies, and bosses providing a fresh experience each run.
Excellent multiplayer experience with local and online co-op for up to four players.
Smooth and satisfying combat for the genre with unique weapon skills.
Engaging upgrade system where you collect souls and improve your character between runs.
Charming hand-drawn art style and fitting sound design enhancing game atmosphere.

Clunky and sometimes unresponsive controls, with slow movement and attack animation locking.
Imbalanced weapons and enemies favor ranged combat; some melee weapons are ineffective.
Long grind for upgrades with escalating costs and souls lost if unused, causing progression to feel slow.
Random loot and boss encounters can lead to frustrating RNG-dependent runs.
Boss fights and enemy attacks sometimes feel unfair with limited evasion options.
Online multiplayer can experience bugs, desynchronization, and connection issues.
Lack of character customization; playable characters are randomized with only cosmetic options.
Repetitive level design and limited dungeon variety may make gameplay stale over time.

gameplay
282 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
22%
66%
12%
The gameplay of Lost Castle is a straightforward side-scrolling beat-'em-up with roguelite elements, featuring a variety of weapons and cooperative multiplayer support that offers satisfying, if sometimes repetitious, combat. While its combat mechanics are accessible and the progression system adds replay value, many players find the controls clunky, animations slow, and core combat shallow compared to similar games, leading to frustration and limited strategic depth. Overall, it provides an enjoyable but imperfect experience that shines most in co-op play but may lack polish and complexity for hardcore action fans.
- “Lost Castle, developed by Hunter Studio, is a charming yet challenging action RPG with roguelike elements that blends hand-drawn visuals, fast-paced combat, and cooperative gameplay into a tight, satisfying package.”
- “The combat itself is deceptively simple—players can attack, dodge, and use items—but different weapon classes (swords, spears, bows, axes, and more) introduce subtle mechanics and rhythm to each fight.”
- “The simple gameplay is made really enjoyable through the many unique and interesting items, weapons, and power-ups the player can find throughout their playthrough.”
- “Overall light in its fidelity and structure, the beat'em'up gameplay is trivial in play and feels unresponsive due to high animation priority.”
- “The gameplay itself is repetitive, imprecise, and chaotic.”
- “This game has absolutely horrendous controls and combat mechanics, and visuals are just meh.”
graphics
167 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
34%
58%
8%
Lost Castle features simple, cartoonish graphics with a charming, hand-drawn art style that provides a consistent visual identity, though some find it rough or lacking polish. The graphics are generally well-received for their vibrant and colorful presentation, fitting the game's tone, but limited customization and occasional glitches highlight its indie, low-budget nature. Overall, the visuals are effective and appealing to many, though not universally praised, with the aesthetic being a matter of personal taste.
- “The cartoon graphics give the game a charming look, and it seems the makers are going to support this game as it's still very young, but already has patches to address problems.”
- “While the graphics are relatively simple, they are polished and consistent, giving the game a strong visual identity.”
- “All the animations work so well, the graphics are very vibrant and colorful and good to look at, and the art design is really well done.”
- “Graphically, title is very simple in every part - character designs, levels, only monsters are more detailed it seems, compared to others.”
- “This feels extremely low budget, from the notepad-esque text boxes, to the lack of any voice acting, and poor sound effects/graphics.”
- “The game has locked resolution and no graphics tweaks, rendering this beneath minimum acceptable standards for a PC game.”
replayability
86 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
47%
50%
3%
The game boasts high replayability driven by randomized dungeons, enemies, bosses, and gear, ensuring each run feels fresh and unique. Its roguelike elements, varied characters, co-op modes, and progression systems further enhance the experience, offering hundreds of hours of engaging gameplay. While some find the RNG frustrating and difficulty steep, the overall design promotes repeated playthroughs that appeal to both solo players and groups.
- “What really stands out is the sheer amount of gear and artifacts the game has — it makes every run feel fresh and adds a ton of replay value.”
- “Whether you're playing couch co-op with friends, online, or just riding solo, this game offers hundreds of hours in replay value.”
- “Play co-op up to 4 players including local couch co-op mode; with its roguelike elements it is infinitely replayable and makes each run unique for constant interaction and fun with your buddies.”
- “No, because there isn't a ton of replay value and you feel like hitting a 'play wall' after a few hours; gameplay becomes difficult and you don't progress any further.”
- “Overall, I'd recommend it for something to play through and have fun unlocking stuff, but I feel like its replay value dies out pretty fast, and the RNG can get really frustrating.”
- “Replayability is also close to none, especially considering that you have to redo the entire level from the start every time you die; it feels more like a job than a game, and that's why I can't recommend it.”
music
77 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
34%
52%
14%
The music in the game is generally fitting and well-composed with an upbeat, fantasy-themed style that complements the gameplay and locations. However, many users find the soundtrack repetitive, short, and not particularly memorable, which can lead to it becoming grating during extended play. While some praise the catchy and enjoyable tracks, especially boss fight music, others criticize the lack of variety and poor looping, making the music a mixed aspect overall.
- “Audio is surprisingly fine - sounds and, what’s more, music are quite fitting theme-wise for the game and locations in it in particular.”
- “Assuming you've not heard it so often you can't stand it, the music is well composed and is a good match for the fantasy motif.”
- “The graphics and music both are quite decent and come together nicely, making this game visually appealing with good music setting the scene for a fun time.”
- “Big cons of this game is the soundtrack is quite bad, it sounds like a bunch of 5 second music on loop.”
- “The music is sooooo boring, along with the lack of fun objects and creativity in items.”
- “Music that loops awfully with an awkward pause every 30 seconds, sound effects that probably were taken from a fair use package found on an Angelfire site in 1999.”
story
75 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
24%
65%
11%
The game's story is minimal and simplistic, primarily serving to provide context rather than deep narrative engagement, with many players finding it repetitive and lacking closure even after multiple completions. While some appreciate its lighthearted tone and modest humor, story-driven players may be disappointed by the thin plot and basic storytelling. Overall, Lost Castle emphasizes gameplay and replayability over a rich or compelling story experience.
- “Every time you beat the final boss the story progresses and in those runs you will unlock new equipment.”
- “It surprisingly has an interesting follow-up story, so somehow you are looking forward to the story progression.”
- “The story also progresses and gives you another reason to go back through everything all over again, but that I won’t spoil here.”
- “Additionally, the humor—while often effective—can occasionally fall flat, and the lack of strong narrative depth means story-driven players might not find as much to latch onto.”
- “Spoiler alert: after beating the game 3 times you get no closure, no end, no nothing, just a story loop!”
- “The developer was unable to come up with decent level design or game/story flow/plot, so they opted to try to use samey repetitive procedural generation as a substitute for adding content to the game.”
grinding
70 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Grinding is a major and often criticized aspect of the game, with many players finding progression tedious due to slow combat, expensive upgrades, and repetitive farming of limited levels and bosses. While some appreciate the variety of weapons and occasional fun moments, the excessive grind, inconsistent difficulty, and sluggish controls frequently lead to frustration and boredom, especially in single-player mode. Multiplayer is noted to somewhat alleviate the grind, but overall, the heavy emphasis on grinding detracts from the gameplay experience for many.
- “Collecting souls to get more upgrades is tedious as the upgrades get more expensive as you buy more upgrades.”
- “Very grindy, in order to progress you have to play through the same 5 levels many, many times.”
- “Most of the time there is no way to counter enemy actions and the only thing you can do is tediously deal one single hit, then run away a few steps, then deal a second hit and again run away, repeat... this is not a definition of 'fun' battle, at least for me.”
humor
55 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game's humor is characterized by its quirky, lighthearted, and tongue-in-cheek style, featuring funny item descriptions, goofy enemies, and comical potion effects that often lead to hilarious moments, especially in co-op play. While the narrative humor may be shallow and occasionally fall flat for some, the overall charm and playful mechanics, including funny glitches and character designs, make it an enjoyable, laughter-filled experience.
- “The narrative is intentionally light and tongue-in-cheek, filled with humorous item descriptions, goofy enemies, and a cartoonish art style that contrasts sharply with the dark themes of corruption and demonic invasion.”
- “We've had so much fun playing it and there are always some hilarious moments of someone doing something stupid and the rest of us trying to compensate.”
- “The music is much better, the combat is weightier, there're more weapons (at least, more than I've seen on previous playthroughs), and there's a new compendium of weapons and armour and monsters so you can keep track of what you've already found/defeated—and some of the info on them is pretty damn funny.”
stability
38 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
5%
95%
The game has persistent stability issues, especially with online multiplayer, including frequent freezes, glitches, and occasional crashes that can disrupt gameplay. While some bugs are minor and even humorous, others are game-breaking, with ongoing improvements noted due to active developer support. Overall, stability remains a concern but is gradually improving.
- “Not too buggy, I had zero latency issues playing with my friend.”
- “Not 100% bug-free; in multiplayer, there are some hilarious glitches, notably ghost items and a player becoming invincible to everything but traps.”
- “Coming back to this game after years just a few hours after it got a game-breaking buggy update.”
- “This happens every time one player's game freezes and then it hard disconnects the whole party.”
- “Experienced multiple bugs and glitches: the game freezing on loading screen, volume setting sets itself to 0 during gameplay for no reason, and multiple problems while trying to co-op.”
character development
12 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
25%
50%
25%
Character development in the game features gradual RPG-style progression with some engaging pacing and unique character designs that balance creepy and comical elements well, particularly in bosses and minions. However, opinions on character design vary widely, with some appreciating the art style while others find it unattractive and uninspiring. Overall, while character progression adds some depth, it may lack enough meaningful development to sustain long-term engagement for all players.
- “The RPG elements apparent in Lost Castle lead to gradual character development improvements, though even at higher levels it is still possible to struggle.”
- “So yes, the levels and the game play pretty much the same over and over, but the pacing of character development provides enough change each time to keep you engaged.”
- “The character designs, especially the grotesque bosses and goofy minions, strike a perfect balance between creepy and comical.”
- “There is some fun to be had here, but there's just not enough character development to keep you engaged for long periods.”
- “And there's zero character development.”
- “These are all useless if they do not have anything so special about their class and their weapon type involved with the character development.”
optimization
12 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
25%
50%
25%
Optimization in the game is mixed: while it runs smoothly on various systems and is fairly optimized for multiplayer with stable FPS even during heavy enemy loads, there are notable performance issues such as heavy graphical strain during boss fights and unnecessary resource use due to the Epic Social Overlay. Additionally, combat efficiency is hampered by unoptimized boss mechanics and low damage output from many weapons, detracting from overall gameplay fluidity.
- “Pretty fun, it's not really my type of game but it's got nice co-op and runs smoothly.”
- “Game is fairly optimized, loading quickly and FPS doesn’t drop even with a big number of enemies on screen, even on old laptops.”
- “Runs smoothly on my iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, late 2015) in full screen mode, a device with an Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200 1536 MB.”
- “Game performance is also terrible for such a simple game. For some reason, the game loads the Epic social overlay when launching, probably for crossplay reasons (even if there's an option to toggle crossplay, which I never touched), and that drastically reduces performance.”
- “You can feel where the game is still in development: English translation, some graphical optimization issues during heavy load (lots of enemies and boss introductions), but it's still a playable game as a whole.”
- “The game has basically no optimized way to deal with bosses, unless you count exploiting their pathfinding, which behaves oddly near walls. Even that doesn’t work well due to the pitiful damage your character does, making boss fights a long and tedious experience.”
atmosphere
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
50%
The game's atmosphere is generally well-matched to its level design and setting, providing a smooth and appropriate mood for each area. However, while some players find it decent and engaging, others feel the tone is undermined by poor story and storytelling, resulting in a less immersive and serious experience.
- “Level design goes really well with the setting, creating the necessary smooth and appropriate atmosphere for each area accordingly.”
- “A nice little game with decent enough atmosphere, music, and gameplay to keep me coming back while at the same time not blowing me away.”
- “Each location has a main path where the design changes slightly, but the atmosphere remains exactly the same.”
- “This combination of a horrible story and even worse storytelling leads to a laughable atmosphere that does not make you feel like you are playing a game that takes itself seriously.”
monetization
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The reviews do not provide clear feedback on monetization, focusing instead on the game's art style and animation quality.
emotional
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game evokes strong emotional responses, with moments like the final boss on the second playthrough eliciting tears, highlighting its impactful and heartfelt storytelling.
- “The final boss on the second playthrough made me cry.”