Castle Of Magic (Hands-On) (Nintendo DS) Preview

Castle Of Magic does not do much to break the platform genre's mould. What the developers have done, though, is delivered a fun and tight platform game that fits in perfectly with Nintendo's line up. With just three worlds - spanning standard themes such as pirate-based water levels - it is clearly pitched as a bite-sized download-only title. Visually it appears to take inspiration from some of Nintendo's own DS platform games, such as the Starfy series that is co-developed with TOSE, and borrows animal-transforming mechanics from the same game.

As a platform fan, I enjoyed my time with Castle Of Magic. It's a cartoon platformer that's well put together, includes standard elements like jumping on enemies' heads to take them out and from the looks of screenshots there are some big evil boss monsters hanging around too, though I never faced any while I played; probably because I was selecting levels at random from the different worlds. What is great to see, though, is the way in which Gameloft have put some thought into how the game could be adapted rather than just throwing it onto DSiWare without consideration.