Castle Keeper

Okay - trying to provide helpful criticism. I go through the first patch of levels and they keep feeling like tutorial levels - very simple solutions - but they introduce things without explaining them. The clock is easy to understand, but nothing so far has cost me 'hearts' so I don't know why I need more. I have no idea what the white flask is. When I finally reach a level that requires a little effort, time runs out on me because the keyboard-only controls that don't allow you to hold down a key are slow to do what I tell them to do.

Good game, but there's no way to get past the first few levels when it keeps running out of time (controls are very slow), and running out of time means you have to start all over again from level one, as it doesn't save your progress. I would love to play more of this, but I'm not interested in starting over from level one. I would really like this game if it saved your progress, and perhaps add an "easy mode" with no time limit, for those of us who don't have lightning fast reflexes, or are playing on older computers.

Could be good. Need to be have option to pick level rather than start all over. Most things can be figured out, but you need more explanation of play i.e what flask, clock, hearts, etc. if time limited. Hard to beat time when movement stalls & actually completed one level, but got out of time message anyway.

The first stage, The Village, introduces you to the game play and how to solve the puzzles, i.e. how to move around and finding the right order. Collect hearts (gives you extra lives) and potions (avoid dying on deadly skulls) in later levels and pick up the clock if you're running out of time.

TIP: From time to time, you might need help from other creatures to solve the puzzle. You can even awake already banned creatures if you need them.

With every next stage, the game introduces up to seven new creature types and obstacles like arrows (redirect your creature in a given way), bumpers (pushes the creature back), portals ("teleports" the creature of that color between portals), blocker stones (can be only removed by creatures of that color), keys ("unlocks" a locked pentagram of that color) and deadly skulls that kill your creature (this will cost you a life if you don't have collected the potions and pushes the creature back to start).

The moderately engaging friction-free gameplay mechanic in no way compensates for the minimalistic "why not just TRY everything to see how it works" approach, or the subsequent apparent lack of useful features; maybe they are there, but there seems no intuitive means of discovering them before Gaming Apathy sets in, resulting in moving on rather than any inclination to persevere.