Costume Quest is a cute and charming little RPG from Double Fine, the creators of Psychonauts and Brutal Legend. It's not very long, but its gameplay and character make it fun and addictive like good RPGs should be.
You play as one of two siblings, Wren or Reynold. It's Halloween night and they're getting ready to go trick-or-treating, but they have a bit of a fight like brothers and sisters tend to do. It turns out there are real monsters running amock in the neighborhood trying to steal and collect all the candy that they can. Your sibling, dressed as a candy corn is mistaken for a large piece of candy and kidnapped by the monsters. It's up to you to get them back, and along the way collect as much candy as your little hands can hold.
There are three different sections of the game, but each is structured in the same way. There're kids playing hide and seek who you have to find, a guy running an apple bobbing game, some kids looking for rare "Creepy Treats" cards, and a whole lot of candy to be found by hitting trash cans, piles of leaves and other things you'll see lying around. The main gameplay comes from when you trick-or-treat at the houses in the neighborhood. Depending on the house, you'll encounter an adult with candy or a monster ready to pounce you.
When combat begins your cute little character changes in spectacular fashion to a badass looking fighting version of the costume they're wearing. Part of the fun of collecting new costumes is seeing just what shape they'll take in battle. The combat system isn't very complicated, but once you get the hang of it, it's quick and a lot of fun to play. The system is similar to the Penny Arcade game with turn based combat mixed with quick button prompts that vary slightly from costume to costume. One might be a slider bar where you have to press a button once it reaches the sweet spot, another has you mashing a randomly chosen button and another requires a quick button press after you attack. Once you get the hang of it, it's not at all challenging, but the randomization of the buttons keeps is interesting. The generous amount of rumble during attacks make it exciting and satisfying.
There are ten different costumes you can fight with, all of which have different special attacks. Special powers include AoE attacks, healing and defense abilities. Your abilities can also be modified with "Battle stamps" one of which can be equipped per person. Battle stamps are one of the collectibles which you either buy with candy from a friend's stamp stand or win them in battle. These give you abilities like higher HP, increased damage, counterattack, poison and stun effects. One thing I would've liked was if the game forced you to mix up your abilities. I played most of the game using counterattack and poison AoE stamps. There was only one that I remember needing to change up stamps before attempting a second time.
Costume Quest has really great look to it, with a lot of thought put into creating this ultimate Halloween experience. A lot of it, especially the dialogue between the kids feels very natural and true to life. Things like how you can speed around the level on your healy sneakers really gives that sense of being a kid. The creators of this game really play into that childhood sense of nostalgia for Halloween.
The game's dialogue is all done via text bubbles, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me at all. It's been a long time since I played a modern game that didn't have any voice acting, and it did strike me how silent it felt. But I understand that this is a small indie game, and paying voice actors was probably out of the question. It's a good thing that the writing is good. Not a lot of laugh out loud moments, but it's very clever dialogue that can give you a bit of a chuckle and make you smile.
Near the end of the game I found myself wishing the game could've been made into a longer game with more features, because I would've loved to spend more time in the game. Some of the game got a little bit repetitive, and there were times I would've loved to have a world map, but the game is short enough that what repetition exists in the game isn't ever a deal breaker. In an ideal world I would've liked some more minigames, uses for the collectibles and also reason to change up my costumes and battle patches. My mainstays in the game were the robot, knight and I alternated the statue of liberty with a couple other costumes. More boss battles with specific weaknesses would've been great in a bigger game.
Leveling up comes at a pretty good clip, and I never felt like I was grinding because the battles are very quick and a lot of fun. What can I say? It's just a lot of fun collecting lots of candy, occasionally getting a higher capacity bag and seeing what raw materials it takes to make the new costume pattern you've found. The game isn't very hard, and just by playing the game I got the full 200 achievement points with little difficulty. There were a couple costume elements that it took me a while to find, but the game is structures so that you can't miss anything if you happen to forget to collect something from a certain area and then moved on.
I hope Costume Quest does well because it's a great fun little game with cute cartoony cel-shaded graphics and just enough gameplay variety to keep things interesting. I hope that Double Fine finds a way to revisit Costume Quest because I'd love to play more. It's out on Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network for $15 so check it out!