Review: Castle Lamar

When 2019 came around, Nikola decided to showcase some more of her talent to the coop/SP crowd. It's been two years since her last release, Escape from Drea and the new map, Castle Lamar, could very well be treated as a loose sequel to it, due to the very similar medieval theme in both the visual and aural aspects. That is a good thing - for the most part, Drea was one of Nikola's best releases and the perspective of playing through its successor sounded really promising. And in my personal opinion, it fared really well.

The player once again begins the level in a bedroom - this time that of a castle. The bedroom seems locked from all sides and a switch opens one of the doors: get used to it as that will be the case for the entire level - occasionally a door is locked and the player, our nameless adventurer, must find a pushable switch, a lever or another type of mechanism to unlock another section of the castle. Meanwhile the player character will make a comment or two serving as a hint and same with the occasional Nali, but that's pretty much it - how the adventurer came to the castle and what is their purpose here, that isn't stated anywhere and is therefore open to interpretation.

While that sounds standard fare and not really unique - that doesn't mean that playing doesn't give us any sense of accomplishment, as both that switch-hunting factor and the meat of every proper Unreal level that is combat, all of it was realized splendidly. As for the latter, enemies come in small groups, of mostly Krall and Skaarj, plus a few types of common pests. The fights can be challenging, expecting the player to have experience with crowd control, but there's never any real lack of ammunition. The player is given everything they could possibly need to handle the threats, however that doesn't mean they can be ignored or breezed through.

The castle itself is pretty large in terms of scale and a fresh coat of paint in the form of custom medieval-themed textures and decorations are scattered about - it keeps the level in line with the excellent Drea and even improves upon it, and there are several distinct sections such as the interior courtyard area, the library, and an underground tunnel, giving the player a feel of exploring a construct akin to Dracula's Castle. The Nali scattered throughout will present hints to help players in case they're stuck and while there's some backtracking, it's done in a fairly linear fashion, as there aren't many options where faraway doors could be opened. Now, in the starting area there are a few decos that can be clipped through to an extent and the ending is a dead-end corridor, which looks pretty abrupt and a tad strange, but personally I haven't found any other faults with the level. There are no lighting issues either, the level feels very realistically lighted and some of the 227 emitters at play only help in that aspect.

The audio layer offers little ambience but there are two custom music tracks of medieval theme included, which help with maintaining the level's theme. While minimalist ambience may sound lacking, due to the near constant fierce action the issue is hardly noticeable anyway.