Trick & Treat

TL;DR - A very enjoyable and fun game. Don't expect it to scare your pants off, or to scare you at all for that matter but you can expect a fun time and a cute story.

The Good:
-Great art
-Unlockables
-Bonus room with really nice sketches, CG gallery, mini-BGM select and more advancements added as you progress
-Good use of tilesets

The Bad:
-A handful of typos and grammar issues
-A handful of technical errors

Trick & Treat reminds me of stuff like Living Playground or Moonlight Ghost, harnessing horror themes and ideas while still keeping things fairly safe. Oh, you can die. You can die a lot if you're not careful. But at the end of the game, I noticed I wore a smile for most of it.

Charlotte the forest witch takes her maid with her for some trick or treating on Halloween. Her idea to pranking their new neighbor who lives in a spooky castle turns sour when her temper gets the better of her and she runs off, leaving Amelia all alone to catch up to her mistress.

First off, these characters are adorable. They have great art and sprites and there's more of it to be enjoyed in the bonus room. Amelia sincerely wants to protect her mistress from harm and Charlotte feels the same way toward her maid. I found Richard to be lovably quirky too. An array of lesser NPCs add to the mix little by little.

We play most of the story as Amelia as we go from room to room solving basic puzzles, item puzzles and possibly dying. I can't say that death comes harshly at any point because all the puzzles are relatively easy. What killed me most often was just checking objects which I knew better than to check (like standing on the gallows) but I'd just saved a moment prior and figured meh, why not. The only puzzle with any real difficulty (assigning the dolls) has no game over element. Not that death is a bad thing here. There are several Dead Ends to collect, featuring a short scene, a death title, and a basic CG.

Trick and Treat also has a robust amount of replay value. With multiple endings, unlockables in the bonus room, a cute extra costume for Amelia, some additional dialogue and a slot machine-esque minigame you're not likely to stop after just one go. If I were to wish for anything it'd be a new room and puzzle or two when going for True End on a clear save (I saw a room that I could never get into so maybe I just missed it). I also wish you could see a textless version of the bonus art since it looked fantastic. Even better than what's in the rest of the game. Of course going through the game a second time you blast right through it with no hang-ups.

Tilesets are used skillfully and chosen well. The main hall may seem too big at first but as it fills with ghosts and other phantoms as the game progresses you can tell why.

The music and audio are ok, including that NLV version of Greensleeves that I love so much which finds it's way into many games.

There's also some lore here with several lead-ups to future stories involving this cast. The overall story is enjoyable with light twists and turns but nothing super deep as you unravel the history of the castle and it's owner. Perhaps it turns out a little too pacified at the end.

I can solidly recommend this to people who want to play horror games but just aren't good with them or who want to play an adventure game but aren't very good at those either.