Way too casual for its own good.
Costume Quest is a feeble attempt for a Haloween themed casual game from Double Fine and it's just way too underdeveloped and simple in its every aspect to be anything worth remembering.
Story is simple. It's Halloween night and two siblings, Reynold and Wren, are asked by their mother to go out with their costumes and make new friends by trick or treating, but one of the siblings( dpends on your choice ) is taken away by a monster and the other one must venture into an Halloween night
adventure to save her/him.
CQ's game-play is consisted of exploration and turn based JRPG style combat. Both aspects are extremely simple without any sort of real challenge. Exploration is mostly about finding NPCs that give you quests, finding six hidden kids in each level, fining candies scattered around ( they act as currency ) and finally finding houses that you have to trick or treat. ( It's a part of the main quest. ) There are 4 levels ( counting Grubbins on Ice DLC which is included in PC version ) and all of the actions mentioned above should be done in them without any kind of variety which makes the game super boring and unexciting.
Other half of the game ( turn based combat ) is better and more interesting, but still, it has the same problem. It's simplistic and shallow. Everytime you encounter an enemy, you are directed to the battle screen and the costumes your characters wear turn into a stylish semi realistic version of themselves. Your normal attacks can do more damage if you press certain buttons in a certain time ( depends on the kind of attack ) which makes the combat a bit more engaging.
Each costume has its own spectacular talent ( which gets unlocked after 3 turns ), some are aggressive, some defensive and some supportive. Except costumes, battle stamps have a slight effect on the way combat goes too. But the problem is that some of them are very overpowered and make losing by getting your characters killed impossible, even if you want to. Even if you lose ( which rarely happens ), there are no consequences and you can do the battle again without losing anything.
But still, combat in the game can be a mild amusement( especially at first ) and all those flashy animations for special abilities sometimes feel very rewarding.
Double Fine games are known for their humorous approach to their subject matter. Unfortunately, humor in CQ is very very childish and chessy and most of the dialogues in the game ( which are not voice acted ) sound like they're take from a kid TV show whcih even kids find too childish. There are some one liners here and there, but they can't save the humor in the game to be an absolute bore. Considering the humor and the simpleness of everything else in the game, CQ is obviously a game direted at a young audience.
Visual style in the game also leaves a lot to be desired. Since this game is Haloween themed, it would have been better to use a more serious, darker,creepier visual style for it. ( by keeping the lighthearted feeling of the game of course. Kinda like some Tim Burton movies. ) But the current style gets old too fast and it's more appropriate for games with jungles and green areas which CQ doesn't have.
There are games that don't take themselves seriously, there's no problem in that. But CQ has gone too far with it and the result is a lazy boring game which you have to force yourself to finish, although it's already short.
