Dark Castle for Playdate

DARK CASTLE for Playdate

Storm the castle, ring the bells and topple the Black Knight!

Dark Castle is the 1986 Macintosh classic by Silicon Beach Software, ported to the Playdate from the original disk. Prince Duncan sets out to dethrone the Black Knight, armed with a bag of rocks, and fights his way through rats, bats, guards, mutants and worse. From the Great Hall, doors lead to the Trouble rooms, the Shield and Fireball quests, and the Black Knight's throne room. Don't go there unprepared!

This isn't a remake: the game logic is a line-by-line port of the original 68k code, and every screen, sprite, sound and room comes straight from the original disk, pixel for pixel. Both screens are black and white, so nothing is scaled; each room scrolls instead, with the status bar always at the bottom, like the original. It runs at the original 12 frames per second, and it's just as hard as you remember.

Controls:

- D-pad left/right: walk. On ropes, swing to the next rope or jump off.
- D-pad up/down: climb ladders, ropes and stairs; down ducks on plain floor. Up is also the action key: it picks up rocks and elixir, raises the shield (hold it), pulls levers and uses the key.
- A: jump.
- B: throw a rock.
- Crank: aim the throw, the way the mouse did.

Changes to the original:

- Baby difficulty: like Beginner, but with infinite lives, in case you are as bad at this game as I am. Scores don't go on the Scores of Merit.
- Hint system: until you've done it once, a hint over Duncan's head points out when up picks up rocks or elixir, or raises the shield.
- The system menu shows the controls, and has "look", which freezes the game so you can pan around the whole room with the d-pad.

CREDITS

- Dark Castle © 1986 Silicon Beach Software, designed by Mark Stephen Pierce and programmed by Jonathan Gay.

- Playdate port by neuroine.

AI USAGE

AI assistance was used in the code: reading the original's 68k disassembly and porting it to Lua, extracting the game's data from the disk image, and the test tools. All the graphics, sounds and level designs are the original game's, extracted unchanged; there are no AI-generated images, sounds or levels.

COPYRIGHT

Dark Castle's code, graphics, sounds and levels belong to its copyright holders, and are included without permission as a tribute to the original. This port is free and will stay free. If the copyright holder asks, I will take it down.

This is a free, non-commercial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Silicon Beach Software or its successors.