Preamble
Although Castle Red is advertised as a Survival Horror game, I think only Survival is appropriate here.
Reason being : It lacks the qualities that allow for a genuinely edge-of-your-seat eerie experience, but performs better in it's exploration and puzzle busting prowess. There are moments of suspense to speak of, but nothing of the caliber we can experience from familiar names like Resident Evil or, say, Desert Nightmare.

Visual: 2/5
First things first, I'll never be able to take the bobblehead RTP as scary, no matter what you do with it. Appreciable efforts were made with weather effects, lighting changes, blood spattering and tentacle wriggling, but it's just near impossible to take inherently cartoonish sprites and make deathly serious theater out of them. "His head is larger than his body" will always be subconsciously present, and giving goldilocks an axe is more cute and hilarious than it is unnerving.

And dare I say that one of the ambiance setting techniques, screen shading, went awry a few times? Using a dark screen to simulate a dark room is par for the course in this genre, but pitching us into total blackness is uncalled for. Playability is adversely affected when a monitor's brightness just can't go high enough to compensate, and a player isn't able to see whose coming from where and killing him.

Audio: 2/5
Sound effects are the other half of Castle Red's unfrightenability. SPROING and PEW aren't often heard in horror yarns for a good reason, and you can couple that with certain BGMs being a little too upbeat for their intended mood. Was this the tragic result of a limited pool of resources? Can't be. In 2015, there's no reason for not being able to procure a more diverse collection than what the RTP provides.
Granted, I did like the fast-paced action music during the big battles when it became do-or-die score settling time.

Anyway, that's not to say all sound is bad and the speakers are best left off. Lightning rumbles and crashes, death throes are ghastly, and faraway shrieks portend to imminent danger. Sometimes a disconcerting tune hums quietly as you tread unfamiliar ground.
But it's only sometimes. And then BOINK happens.

Storyline: 4/5
This is where the better attributes lie.
Jonathan Miller, the protagonist, meets with several other "guests" in the castle, all looking for the same thing : the exit. Where Castle Red runs strong is in using brief interactions with each guest to clearly define their individual levels of fear and distrust. Once the player has a good idea as to who's useful, who's worth protecting, and who's worm food, the situation is ripe for upending. I shall speak no spoiler, but let's just say some character's actions are surprising and their motivations only become clear after the fact.

Now, I've always posited that a horror feature stops being scary when it devolves into run-from-the-maniac schlock. The many minions of evil aside, Jonathan's relations with other guests and the enigmatic maid sometimes turns into a kerfuffle on the physical plane, but his primary antagonist exists as an obscure, omnipotent force; more a religion than anything else. Castle Red's creator has expressed interest in making a series out of this. In spite of six different endings offering their own degrees of closure, the door is still wide open to that possibility.

Gameplay: 4/5
Unlike the weaker Horror elements, Survival aspects are alive and well played.
Most of the action is handled with a simple stealth system. Inexplicable crazies are found in the less lit areas of the castle, watching for intruders whom they can feast on the remains of. Jonathan's goal is to avoid confrontation with as many as possible because his lifespan is game-limited and only so many defensive weapons are available. There are no safe bedrooms to sleep in, no healing fountains to re-visit, and no potion peddling merchants to alleviate his hardships.
The downside to this approach is that it contributes to a frugal Save-and-Load playstyle. If your lifepoints are limited, no sane player will allow a single point to go to waste if they can help it. In hindsight, the expectation to reload your save is yet another reason the game isn't very scary.

Sneaking around undetected, being puzzle'ish in itself, is complimented by the abundance of actual puzzles. Fully exploring the castle means finding secret passageways, and defeating certain enemies often requires a more clever execution than your weapons at hand (no pun intended). Despite taking place in a single castle, the game remains fresh by opening new and interesting areas and ushering forth unusual obstacles.
And when I say unusual, I do mean unusual...



Overall: 3/5
For the first in a series, Castle Red shows promise. The creator's handle on writing and gameplay is sure enough, but major effort in the aesthetics field will be needed if a genuine masterwork of survival horror is ever to be made.