Castles of Dr Creep is a unique puzzle game that usually requires co-operative two-player team work to complete the puzzles. The basic premise is that you are trapped inside the castle, and you need to escape. You do this by finding and accessing particular keys for particular doors. There are a number of keys to keep track of, along with a number of doors. Each is identified by its colour, which made this game almost impossible to play on a black and white screen.
The game play is set up in a 'room' style of play, where you enter rooms and leave rooms. Each room has its own puzzle that you have to overcome before you can reach your goal. The consequence of getting it wrong is death - where you will have to start back at the beginning. Some obstacles within rooms involve conveyer belts, which move too fast to run across in one direction. Also there are electrified objects, which when touched kill. On top of this, there is the maze of the rooms, where it is just difficult to know where you are in the level, and where you should be going. This, of course, opens up a lot of fun exploring each level. As you manage
to find the key for, and open a particular door, you are usually immediately stopped by another door with a different colour.
Some levels can just take hours to complete, and only require one player, but others, take days of enjoyable game-play and a second player. Also sometimes it’s necessary to ‘sacrifice’ a player just so the other can leave the castle and thereby win the game. You can elevate the fighting from this by just playing both people. Players take turns anyways, except when they are in the same room, where they can move at the same time.
Other memorable parts to this game were the incredible selection of music that was available to choose from for during the game and the multitude of levels that players could choose from. These factors make it one of the most addictive games for the commodore 64, for the puzzle buffs, at least. For number of hours of game-play I give it a 9/10, addictiveness 10/10, music 10/10, graphics (9/10 - for a C64), and overall enjoyment, I give it a 9.5/10. I definitely put it in the top 10 of the close to 1500 commodore games I had as a child. It is definitely a good candidate for a modern programmer to recreate for today's enjoyment.
