Lame Castle Review

The history of Lame Castle starts in a strange place. Remember those irritating PSP ads with Marcus Rivers, overenthusiastic PSP pitchman who bashed mobile games with the kind of adolescent fury that reminds you why kids are such insufferable little turds. Well, long after Kevin Butler sent Marcus to his room with no dinner and Sony decided that the whole phone gaming thing had some validity in it after all, the legacy of the commercials lives on in one way. A fake game title shown on the phone in one ad, Lame Castle, has been made into an actual iPhone game. It's the most spiteful game on the App Store. Lame Castle is an endless platformer, the best comparison being to the Robot Unicorn Attack series. You play as a knight on a stick horse for some reason, trying to get to the end of the levels to topple an unimpressive castle. You have a double jump and a dash attack to help you get through hazards like rocks and spike pits, along with treasure chests and chickens that you can whack around for bonus points.

The game features a papercraft-inspired graphic style, where everything looks like it was made of construction paper. The game has a level-based mode that gives you bonus challenges to play, to help you master things like hitting the treasure chests. As well, there's 4 different endless modes, including one standard distance-based mode, as well as one where you only get points for hitting chickens. And hitting chickens is the best part of this game - it's just so fun to smack those cute round chickens around and rack up points. The game also comes with Game Center support.

The level design in the game is largely uninspired - there's very little challenge in the levels, and it's all largely flat, with few hazards. The bonus challenges in each level tend to be far more challenging than the level design itself. Beyond the art style and punting chickens, there just isn't a lot to make the game feel special, or unique, or even like it's a must-have endless running game. It just feels derivative.

Lame Castle may be more interesting for its concept than its actual gameplay will be, but considering its interesting inception and the fact that it s sticking it to Sony by its very existence. The free version may be worth checking out just to acknowledge its existence, and to stick it to those who deride iOS gaming.