Crossy Road Castle is the latest spin-off of the Crossy Road franchise, which began as an endlessly replayable update of Frogger. The latest game in the franchise turns it into a fun, yet admittedly dumb, platformer that has players going through thousands of floors as they try to collect coins and climb towers. Is it high art? No, but I can put funny hats on a giraffe and have fun while doing so, and sometimes that is simply enough.
The goal of each floor is quite simple: walk to the door on the other side of the level. How you get there will vary wildly. Sometimes, it’s simply avoiding or bouncing on the heads of some enemies, while other times, there’s light puzzle-solving involved, such as collecting items or triggering buttons that change the layout. Either way, the levels always take less than a minute to do and are quite fun with later towers incorporating some more involved gameplay compared to the opening tower.
You’ll unlock different towers as you go along, allowing you to try to top your score. There are fun boss fights that will require some quick reflexes and memorization to defeat that mix things up and Crossy Road Castle does a good job of not feeling repetitive even when you’re on floor 80 or up on a good run. Eventually, you will run out of lives, although you can buy more hearts from vending machines if you want to use up the coins you’ve been carefully collecting.
Outside of the towers, the coins can be used in the prize machines, which unlock a variety of characters and hats you can then use. There are also individual achievements in each area that allow you to unlock cute stickers. There’s honestly a ton of content here and the flow is satisfying enough to keep going back every once in a while. Crossy Road Castle will never be a game I play for hours on end, but I will gladly boot it up for a run every couple of days and have a smile on my face while doing so.
Adding to the array of content are challenge events that will pop up. These have different tasks, such as trying to race through 20 rooms, and there are individual leaderboards to try to climb. They’re a fun way to mix things up. So is playing in multiplayer, as the game can support up to four players at once and it gets wonderfully frantic.
Crossy Road Castle Review: Final Verdict
Crossy Road Castle is a casual game done right. It’s easy to pick up and play, has a charming art style, and has a ton of content for you to discover over time. It’s dumb, it’s fun, and that’s exactly what you want from a game sometime.
SCORE: 8/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 8 equates to “Great.” While there are a few minor issues, this score means that the art succeeds at its goal and leaves a memorable impact.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a digital PS5 copy for our Crossy Road Castle review. Reviewed on version 1.000.001.
