Hello, ladies and gentlemen!
Castle Chase is a short RPG Maker VX adventure gama with light dating-sim elements made by Racheal & MakioKuta, Team Dragonfly for Game Gale 2010. This adventure game was apparently planned to be the first entry of a series (play and see!), unfortunately the sequel was never released, not even as a demo version, by the way you can enjoy this game since it's still a stand alone adventure with different endings!

In Castle Chase we play as Princess Monica Logelin, but if you expect her running from a serial killer inside an abandoned castle, well no. It's not that kind of game nor that kind of chase! Monica is in trouble because her brother will inherit the throne, an she's going to be marry a boorish prince because her father, the king, said so (politics!). But Monica won't sit idly waiting for her arranged marriage (well actually you STILL CAN marry the prince as her father wants, it's one of the possible endings!) and will try to find someone else to marry or even escape the castle to live free... well, good luck!


Gilroy never fails to remind us how useless is he!!!

Castle Chase is a lighthearted adventure about love and freedom, do not expect battles or complicated puzzles: you just explore the castle, talk to people and collect items. The game has a simple interface that shows the selected item on the upper left corner of the screen, and with the "A" and "S" keys you can circle through the various items (that include a Save Diary, used... to save, of course!). Oh, and remember that the inventory screen is very useful to read the descriptions, that 90% of the time give useful hints about the where you are supposed to use that item (not always it will be clear, still it helps!).
Oh and as I wrote before the game has different endings, some can be obtained in a short time (one took me 5-6 minutes) while others require more work (first took me two hours!). Getting the different endings, in this last deluxe version that was updated to the first event "prototype", unlocks a gallery and some extra informations about the characters of the game.

Since I mentioned the gallery, let's speak of the graphics of the game: since you probably already looked at the pictures here, you can see that the maps are pretty much average, nothing bad, on the contrary they're mostly well designed still nothing really new, since they consist in 100% Rtps (that give that "generic rpgmaker feel" to the game), anyway we've some custom assets designed by MakioKuta (whose art was surely used in one or two of the games I reviewed in the past, but now I cannot remember the title/s) like the facesets (That not only include different expressions for most characters, but they were created for EVERY single character you meet, including the generic guard and servant! This wasn't really necessary since most game only reserve facesets to those characters who matters, anyway I like this attention to the details) or the items, but there are also hand drawn cutscenes for the various endings. I'm also pretty sure that most charsets are edited to match their portraits, anyway the final result is very good.
Concerning music there’s only one musical track that plays during the whole game (and if I'm correct it's also original, made for this game), but it's really appropriate for a lighthearted medieval adventure!


Uh-oh... I don't know, but this Delmar seems to be a shady and untrustworthy fellow!

Final Verdict
Princess Monica Logelin is no damsel in distress, on the contrary she's a clever girl while most of the men in the castle do not seem to be too bright (from that useless Gilroy to that silly fop of Prince Skyler), anyway I liked how different and well written are the various characters. Anyway what will be your choice? Will you try to leave the castle or get a date with one of the men in the castle? And which one? The unconfident squire or the cunning thief? Or you will agree with father and try to know better Prince Skyler? Well your choice, play and see, the choice is yours! This game is solid, well written and pretty good for spending and afternoon! Nice!