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You are Jonathon Miller. Today you woke up under a storm cloud in the courtyard of a massive castle. You don't know how you got there, and your only clue is an invitation in your pocket, beckoning you to visit Castle Red.

The castle is vast and empty, but there are a few others roaming the halls. Others like you, brought to the castle under mysterious circumstances. Each holding an invitation.

The worms are in the walls.

Praise be.


----

Castle Red is a Survival Horror game created with RPG Maker VX Ace. It is my first Ace project, and features a simple stealth system (the Trace Stealth System created for VX by Prof. Meow Meow, and converted to VXA by LiTTleDRAgo) and a lighting system (Khas Awesome Lighting Effects by Khas Arcthunder). Throughout the game you will explore a massive castle, solve puzzles, interact with various characters, evade monsters, and try to solve the mysteries of Castle Red.

Featuring a branching story with six possible endings!

Latest Blog

Announcing Castle Red 2!



I'm pleased to announce Castle Red 2: Subservience, expected to release in late 2015, hopefully by Christmas!

The game's official RMN page should appear here sometime over the next day or so.

I'd like to thank everyone who played the original Castle Red, both those who enjoyed it and those who didn't. I'd especially like to thank those who provided feedback to me; your critiques have been invaluable in helping me craft this sequel. Thank you.
  • Completed
  • LizardBite
  • RPG Maker VX Ace
  • Adventure Puzzle
  • 11/12/2014 08:28 PM
  • 12/09/2019 09:12 PM
  • 11/28/2014
  • 60609
  • 24
  • 2133

Posts

Pages: first 12 next last
Interesting. When will a download be available?
I am not 100% certain. There are two sections of the castle that are still not done, and I'm halfway through one of them. The target completion date is December 20th, but I'll likely be done sooner than that. I think I'll probably have the download up at the end of this month.
shayoko
We do not condone harassing other members by PM.
515
what kind of horror story has a male lead!?
it takes away most of the horror!
author=shayoko
what kind of horror story has a male lead!?
it takes away most of the horror!


Um? The Thing, The Mist, In the Mouth of Madness, most of the Silent Hill series, all of Lovecraft's work, Psycho (spoiler alert), Dracula, Frankenstein, every Hannibal story except for Silence of the Lambs, Event Horizon, the Amnesia games, Outlast, Hellblazer, The Walking Dead...
This is a pretty good game......I only got two end, the end E and F.could you give me some prompt for other ends?
nhubi
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
11099
OK now this is interesting, I'm finding myself becoming more of a fan of the horror end of the scale lately, or at least certain aspects of it and this seems to hit a few of those with me, it's more towards the suspense end of the spectrum which I find more interesting than gore splattered walls and shrieking apparitions.

The mapping is good, not great but considered, though that graveyard is a little overpopulated for my tastes and this room (that you have a screen shot for, luckily) is it a bedroom or a dining room because on graphics alone you really can't tell, it's an odd furniture choice. The lighting does aid with the immersion fairly well, so nice use of the script. I do have to agree about the walking speed though, it is slow, or at least feels slow. If you are doing that to add to the atmosphere, a kind of unreal quality to movement then that is fine and could work but it needs a little more texture to it, otherwise it becomes a little annoying which you don't want in this genre. Well you don't want it in any but the horror games need to be more immersive than most and something that annoys the player on a mechanical level doesn't aid in that endeavour.

I apologize for the walking speed. I lowered it to make the player feel vulnerable, and then balanced all the enemy speeds around it. I kind of recall that at first I was also unsure about it, but since playtests of this were the only RPG Maker games I played for about two or three months during development, I quickly got used to it. I admit, I kind of forgot about the speed until people brought it up.

Also, I'm gonna be really cheap and lazy and blame the ambiguous room on the whole "the worms warp time and space" thing. :p

@Lindsay: Replay the game and be nicer to the person from the E ending. ;) There is an opportunity to avoid ending E by choosing a certain answer in a conversation in the Machine Tower and making amends... but if that person has a low enough opinion of you, it won't work.
nhubi
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
11099
Well then you did have a good reason for the walking speed choice and yes it does give that feeling of vulnerability in that a part of you is urging the sprite to just move faster. I did notice the balance with the enemies and realised you had to have made that an informed choice. So given it's part of the vision I'll just learn to work with it.

Oh, the worms, huh, yeah that's lazy :)
Nice game. I wonder if a walkthrough can be obtained? For I got stuck when
the nun asked me to fetch the missing book. Couldn't find the book anywhere.
Stuck at the puzzle of birth years and dying years after separation with Peter, Howard and Agnes.

I've given the pairs of years of four people, but confused about the question. "The life of wife before the life of judge"
The Mrs is not born before the Judge, and the name of Judge doesn't seem to be a woman. So cannot subtract any years for the question.


Good story telling in scripts and created atmosphere.
author=Teacat
Stuck at the puzzle of birth years and dying years after separation with Peter, Howard and Agnes.

I've given the pairs of years of four people, but confused about the question. "The life of wife before the life of judge"
The Mrs is not born before the Judge, and the name of Judge doesn't seem to be a woman. So cannot subtract any years for the question.


Good story telling in scripts and created atmosphere.


You're going about it wrong.

You input the lifespan of the people in the order of the riddle. So you put the Mrs' lifespan first, then the Judge's
author=LizardBite
author=Teacat
Stuck at the puzzle of birth years and dying years after separation with Peter, Howard and Agnes.

I've given the pairs of years of four people, but confused about the question. "The life of wife before the life of judge"
The Mrs is not born before the Judge, and the name of Judge doesn't seem to be a woman. So cannot subtract any years for the question.


Good story telling in scripts and created atmosphere.
You're going about it wrong.

You input the lifespan of the people in the order of the riddle. So you put the Mrs' lifespan first, then the Judge's

Thx and finished the gameplay. As for a typical puzzle game, it ranks 4 stars to me. As for a horror game, it ranks 3.5 stars. The storytelling skill is good and atmosphere is better. Some puzzles are really impressive (the raft puzzle is very new to me).

The main problem of the game is that it contains too many elements. I like the idea of combine monster and detective, and the relationship points(act nice to someone). But the detective scenario in the whole story looks kind of weird. The relationship point seems only affects nun ending and Cecilia ending, it could be the main part that possibly alters the storyline and probably leads to different endings. And one more ending to consider about the relationship points is what happens if Johnathon is not favored by anyone? Things and stories may be more interesting like that.

One more thing to mention is that the BGM of title scene is a bit louder that other game. I don't know why but it is really annoying if I'm someone just want to have a try on the game.

Above all,
game is good (I like the idea and main story),
sound effect is good,
jump scare oh my god really good (I enjoy it),
puzzle good (except the code to machine tower is a bit hard to read),
atmosphere good (sometimes a bit annoying but okay to me).
The relationship points also effect how the scene immediately following the Hedge Maze plays out. This scene is also altered based on an extra hidden set of Suspicion Points that rate how suspicious you've been acting.

Basically, your Suspicion Points determine how difficult it is to convince them of your innocence, while your relationships with Peter, Howard, and Agnes determine whether or not they'll be willing to vouch for you (or give you the benefit of a doubt in Peter's case). The game's story will branch depending on whether Peter decides to trust you or throw you off the edge of the Hanging Gardens.
Wow! That was a really great play. I mean at times I think there were a few errors with the enemies, like at one part I just walked right past a zombie or worm possessed person and they just watched me walk right by, but I'm not complaining because I needed to stock up on weapons. Honestly I'm really curios about what other secrets there are, I mean so far I've found endings A-D and only have two more ending to go, but I've noticed that Jonathan's invitation comes form the 1800s whilst everyone other than Jonathan's comes from the late 1900s and Agnes's invite was from 2011. So I'm just wondering if the dates point towards anything? I know there was one other invite that came from the 1800s too but forgot the name. Also I can't wait for Castle Red 2! I hope I'm not over thinking the dates thing.
Great game Lizardbite. I am looking forward to Castle Red 2 already.
Hiya! I'd just like to say it's an amazing game! I've gotten two endings, on my way to a third one. I was wondering, would it be possible for you to make an endings guide, even to just give us pointers on reaching different endings? Loved the game, looking forward to Castle Red 2.
author=PuffyDango
Wow! That was a really great play. I mean at times I think there were a few errors with the enemies, like at one part I just walked right past a zombie or worm possessed person and they just watched me walk right by, but I'm not complaining because I needed to stock up on weapons. Honestly I'm really curios about what other secrets there are, I mean so far I've found endings A-D and only have two more ending to go, but I've noticed that Jonathan's invitation comes form the 1800s whilst everyone other than Jonathan's comes from the late 1900s and Agnes's invite was from 2011. So I'm just wondering if the dates point towards anything? I know there was one other invite that came from the 1800s too but forgot the name. Also I can't wait for Castle Red 2! I hope I'm not over thinking the dates thing.

I can give you a hand with tips for ending F, seeing as i've gotten it along with ending D.
When you find Cecelia and she's like 'rule with me', you have to say a specific thing.


Also, some tips on endings A-C would be nice, if you could give them. Thanks!
author=Foxina
Also, some tips on endings A-C would be nice, if you could give them. Thanks!


I have added an Ending Guide to the Downloads section
Lengthy 'Escape the mansion' type of game with a heavy emphasis on stealth. Pretty nice RTP style game, but in my opinion there was too much padding. Particularly towards the mid-late game in the gardens and (lord forbid) a giant hedge maze. I also found myself wasting too much time picking up 20 elixirs even though I reload if I get hit more than once in any given area. The stealth scripts are not perfect but they are good enough. Other people already said this but there's not much horror going on, and I think part of it is because there isn't much interaction with other characters compared to how much walking there is, made worse by the ridiculously low running speed. It slowed down the game way too much and by the time I got in the hedge maze it was getting to be a huge slog. Really, the only thing I can say is that I wish there were more things happening plotwise, and less padding. (Especially atrocious was the grandkid fetch quest... 4 back-and-forth-trips through 5 screens at that agonizing footspeed... have mercy
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