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Two classic Macintosh platforming games, 1986's Dark Castle and its 1987 sequel Beyond the Dark Castle, have made a surprising return on Steam.
Built as a "living interactive animation" by a team that included Mark Pierce, Eric Zocher, and Jonathan Gay, Dark Castle was often compared to titles like Lode Runner and Donkey Kong at launch and famously focused on the story of a prince named Duncan who must venture into a perilous castle to confront an evil black knight, overcoming a bunch of traps and collecting magical items to help them in their quest.
Published in 1986 by the Californian publisher Silicon Beach Software, it was considered an impressive title for Apple's line of personal home computers at launch (specifically the 512k and Apple Plus), earning praise from several notable publications of the time, including Dragon, Macworld, Byte Magazine, and Computer Gaming World.
Byte Magazine, for example, called it “a wonderland of slick animation and realistic digitised sound” and “a perfect way to fritter away those long winter evenings when you should be doing something productive," while Computer Gaming World praised Pearce's “astounding” artwork and called it “in a nutshell, the best arcade game I’ve seen for the Macintosh, and perhaps the best I’ve seen on any microcomputer ever.” The game went on to sell tens of thousands of copies and top lists of the best-selling Mac entertainment programs, paving the way for a sequel the following year, which also received glowing write-ups from journalists.
In the years since, its star has somewhat faded, despite the two games receiving ports to other platforms and another sequel, Return to Dark Castle, in 2008, mainly on account of an indifference to Mac-based gaming among the wider gaming community (something Richard Moss set out to correct in his excellent book The Secret History of Mac Gaming).
Nevertheless, there are still people out there who fondly remember the game, which likely explains why Mark Stephen Pierce, one of the series's original creators, has decided to bring the two games back to players for Windows, MacOS, and SteamOS + Linux (via Steam).
The new versions of the game are described as "faithful replicas rather than remakes or reinterpretations" and were built with the help of Josh Juran and Keith Kaisershot's Indigo Runtime, "a high-level reimplementation of a 1980s-era Mac environment."
Both games cost $9.99/£9.09 each, with bundles available to buy both games for $14.99/£13.64 or with this year's rerelease of Return to Dark Castle for $29.99/£26.20. Personally, those prices seem very steep, given the lack of new features, but we're happy to see the games given the chance to reach a new audience.
In other exciting Dark Castle news, it also seems that a new entry could be on the way, with Ludit, the game's new publisher, calling these releases part of their "broader effort to preserve and rebuild the Dark Castle franchise while developing an all-new instalment for a new generation of players."