Costume Quest

My first computer game of 2024 was … Costume Quest. The game is a hybrid of adventure and RPG styles. It certainly would appeal to younger kids but I enjoyed it as well. You control a group of children trick-or-treating on Halloween. The story begins with the brother and sister twins of Reynold and Wren. I chose to play as Reynold. When Wren is kidnapped, it becomes Reynold's task to rescue her. Along the way, Reynold is joined by other kids, Everett and Lucy. A lot of Costume Quest plays like a point and click adventure game. You have items to acquire and puzzles to solve. It also has RPG elements with character levels, ability scores, and inventory of equipment. A lot of the fun is in the acquisition of costumes, battle stamps, and creepy treat cards. Costumes included robot, knight, statue of liberty, space warrior, unicorn, ninja, pumpkin, vampire, french fries, black cat, and grubbin. Each costume provides a different set of special attacks and abilities. Battle stamps can be assigned one per party member and confer additional abilities or bonuses. I enjoyed trying out as many combinations of these as possible. The combat is turn-based and pretty basic. It grew repetitive as the game progressed but not so much that I wanted to stop playing.

Eventually I completed the main game and moved on to the Grubbins on Ice DLC expansion. It served as a sequel with the same characters. This time, Wren joined the party and Lucy was missing. The setting was wintertime in the monster land of Repugia. A few new costumes became available: pirate, eyeball, and yeti. There were new battle stamps and creepy treat cards, too. Characters were capped at level 10 in the base game but rose to level 14 in the expansion. Overall, this was a fun little game and a nice start the new year.