Halloween Quest
A Retrospective by Iblis
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In October 2003 Gizmog1 held a Halloween contest on Castle Paradox. Halloween Quest was RedMaverickZero's entry, and won second place in the contest (after Shadowiii's Pitch Black), scoring the highest points in the "fun" category.

Certainly the thing I liked most about the game is how Halloween-themed everything is. The hero Josh has two skill menus: "Trick" and "Treat," his little brother Max uses candy-based magic like Red Hots (fire) and Peppermint (ice), and Josh's friend Clyde scares enemies to lower their stats. Your money is candy. You use Candy Corn to heal your HP, Jelly Beans to heal your MP, and Mints which are "so fresh they wake the dead" to revive dead party members. Treasure chests are jack-o-lanters. And, of course, the game is set on Halloween night and Josh and Max are wearing costumes. This was really charming and I got sucked into the game immediately because of it.

The graphics are very cartoony, and it works really well for this game. The hero sprites are well drawn and animated, it's all very smooth. I also enjoyed the character design, especially Max's costume and a few of the bosses (like Candlejack and the Grim Reaper-looking one). The graphical style in battle was quite consistent, everything looks like it belongs in the same world. Some people might be bothered by the fact that the eyes are just white squares with no pupils, but it never seemed like a big deal to me and I enjoyed the style anyway.

The map graphics aren't as good, but still decent. The style is less consistent here, where most of the game is really cartoony the grass tile (which you see a lot) is heavily airbrushed and really feels out of place among all the flat colors of everything else, and of course spray-and-pray grass is just very ugly and griddy in general even when it's not so out of place. The grass battle backdrop uses the spray effect as well but since it's not as dense and doesn't form a grid it's not as much of a problem.

Some of the maps are also very un-detailed, mainly the two haunted houses you visit. They don't have any furniture, they just have big empty rooms with nothing except stairs going up to the next level. Of course this is likely because the game was made for a contest under a deadline, but the game has been updated since that contest, adding two more dungeons and some extra story, so I wonder why these maps didn't get any extra attention.

The storyline of this game starts out pretty basic. Josh and Max are out trick or treating when they encounter a zombie rat, kill it, and then happen to stumble upon other weird happenings. Although it could stand to have a little more direction, I like this much of the story. Eventually though, and especially in the areas added to the game in the update, the story becomes a bigger part of the game and, unfortunately, extremely angsty. Now, certainly having a story where people work out their emotional problems and so forth is fine, but it just didn't fit this game. It started as a fun Halloween-themed romp and it did that very well, when it tried to become about family problems it didn't do it very well at all. I couldn't really take the characters' angst seriously. I did still enjoy the end of the game, it just didn't live up to the beginning.

The dialogue in the game is really nothing special. For the most part it's not bad enough to bother me, it's just bland, but there are some parts that are annoyingly repetetive. Mainly the fact that before every single boss battle Josh says some variation of "stay close to me Max!" (as if he hasn't noticed that his little brother can wield powerful candy magic and is a valuable ally). One thing I can say for the dialogue is that for the most part each hero has a certain way that they talk, so it's consistent dialogue even if it's not that interesting.

Textboxes are generally filled with everyone's dialogue instead of separating each character's lines onto separate textboxes, which is terrible for the pacing. Spelling is a minor issue as well, for example spelling "Marauder" as "Maroder," but it's not too much of a problem.

Although I really enjoyed how everything in the game was candy and pumpkins and such, there was one place where it just didn't make sense: Nail town. It was fun using candy as money when I was just buying stuff from another kid on my street, but when you get to this town and start spending candy in the shop and the inn, it just seems stupid. That the game has an inn at all is another problem. This is Halloween Quest, and the game should take place entirely on Halloween night. The inn should have been a clinic or something instead.

The gameplay is nothing all that impressive, but the battles are well-balanced and the novelty of it was good enough for me. The battles were maybe a little too frequent, but that was a minor issue. For the most part the battles don't take too long and they're not too difficult or easy.

There were a few problems with the battles though. The first is that Josh becomes obsolete near the end of the game. Max has all these spells that do tons of damage, Clyde can hurt the enemy's stats, all Josh can really do is attack and steal (he does have a healing spell but it's really weak and you won't use it). This wouldn't be as bad as it is except that throughout the entire game Josh is talking about how he's protecting Max, and it just stops making sense once Max becomes ten times stronger. Another problem is Max's spell "Sour Worm," which poisons the enemy. Once you get it you never need any other spell because the poison damage stacks. Every time you cast the spell it does more damage per turn, and every boss battle once you get the spell (admittedly there are few) becomes ridiculously easy.

The game uses ripped music, but most of it is good. You start with the Halloween Town theme which is absolutely perfect, I think it might be a large part of why I got so into the game at first. I liked the battle and boss battle themes too, they worked well. The game didn't really have any bad music, but OHR games using the FF Fanfare as the victory theme always make me cringe a little, and there were a few scenes that used this really screeching song from FF7, the one that always plays when Cloud is holding his head and hearing voices (as if that narrows it down at all). That wasn't so much a problem with the song itself though, just the poorly made midi.

I definitely recommend Halloween Quest. It's not perfect, but it's worth playing and you can't help but smile playing it.