Estimated reading time: 3-4'

Title: Costume Quest
Developer: Double Fine Productions 
Publisher: Double Fine Productions
Release date: 2011-10-15
Regular price: 9,99 €
Bundled: Yes
Achievements: Yes
Cards: Yes
Steam user reviews: 92% positive

Another sg win down

..and the first game beaten for October

I had thought this month’s theme would have been more halloween-related so I went on and installed this before the actual theme was posted.
And, even if I was wrong, I saw no reason to not play it.

First impression wasn’t that good: loading times felt a bit too long than they should and there was no windowed-mode in the options
After a bit too long intro I got to choose my character and finally started my adventure!
(if you have played this: does something change if you pick the boy or the girl?)

Redacted 'cause original, longer version ended up hitting too hard the game which is not bad at all

Game’s split in 3 main areas where you have to go “trick or threat” to every door you come by. Sometimes you get your candies, some other you get to fight monsters (and get candies as reward afterward). Knocking on heaven’s every door will open the gate to the next area.
Scattered around the place there also many other kids (grown up too) and some of them are even carrier of side-quests.

As you may have seen here and there, style is strange but good and game runs smoothly.
Overall pace never increases much (there are also dialogues you can’t skip which add up to the overall slowness of the game), luckily robot costume lets you move a bit faster.
There have been too dark places (upper floors of the mall) where I had troubles seeing, but it may due to the sunlight reflecting on my poorly placed notebook’s screen (there’s a costume which lets you light up the way though but slows down the group, so I went for “faster and darker”) =P
On the long run fights can be repetitive. I tried various costumes combinations to keep me entertained (and find the best match). Bosses fight aside, they don’t usually last long though :)
A moment of panic happened when an achievement didn't unlock (no way I was going to play the whole game again) and I also thought about stopping my playthrough. Read a bit in the forum and looks like a poor implementation of the achievements themselves, where there’s a possilibity they do not unlock if one obtain them while offline (and my connection went down for 5-10’ right when I got the last stamp needed for the achievement. Lucky! =P In the end I went, “F— that, I’m close to the end, I’ll just beat it”. After that I tried the “expansion” out of curiosity and beat that one too. When I closed the game I noticed that somehow the game magically correctly synced with Steam and I got that lost achievement :D (don’t know if it’s related to me collecting all of the stamps in the expansion or beating the game ‘cause it didn’t pop up, just appeared in my stats page). Lucky! for real, this time =P

Don’t know if there’s more, I actually beat it like a week ago.. been writing this during these days but I had stuff to do so it took more than it should had.

Costume Quest definitely deserves an high vote, something like an 8.5/10.
I was glad it wasn’t longer but not everyone is short on time like me, so this may be a con. Perhaps they “fixed” it in Costume Quest 2..

I am missing only one achievement, which requires you to play the game on christmas day (why not halloween?) so, goodbye kids, see you again in a couple of months!

Scavengin’ time!

After seeing this month’s theme I wasn’t sure I could have been able to join.
I mean, of course I can but there was no certainty to find any of the required items during my playtime.
I had to jot ‘em down on paper to be able to easily check the list if needed and, guess what? I managed to find some required item! :D

Here’s what I found in the game:

Tier1 item2	Tier2 item2	Tier4 item2	Tier5 item2
A torch	Stars	A mythical beast	Death by fire

Please, tell me if you think they don’t fit. Thanks :)