The magazine praised its "slick animation and realistic digitized sound", and concluded that it "is a perfect way to fritter away those long winter evenings when you should be doing something productive". He concluded that Dark Castle "is filled with lots of little touches that show it's one of the first steps toward what Silicon Beach likes to call 'interactive cartoons'." BYTE compared the game to Lode Runner, writing "There's nothing new about the basic concept, but the execution is impressive". The reviewer praised the sound and graphics, stating that he did not know that the Macintosh was capable of animations of such quality. The game can be played at three different skill levels, the hardest "Advanced" level containing more enemies and a few extra surprises.Ĭomputer Gaming World stated that Dark Castle was "the best arcade game I've seen for the Macintosh, and perhaps the best I've seen on any microcomputer, ever". One other is marked with the shield, and the remaining two mysteriously alternate between the fireball course and a more troubling path. The large center door leads to the Black Knight. The game begins in the Great Hall, where the player can choose from four doors. To aid Duncan, a magic shield and the power to hurl fireballs can, fortunately, be found within the Dark Castle. To defeat the Black Knight, Duncan needs to pull several levers which topple him from his throne. More rocks can be found in little bags along the way, as well as bottles of an elixir that provide a one-time antidote to bites of the numerous rats and bats found around the castle. Duncan can run, jump and duck, and can throw a limited supply of rocks at his enemies. Movement within Dark Castle is typical for most platformers. The title along with the programming and development credits are shown on this screen. The opening notes of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor play and are followed by thunderclaps. The game opens with a vista of the castle with storm clouds in the distance. The digitized sound was created by Eric Zocher who worked with voice actor Dick Noel. Pierce designed the animations in MacroMind's "VideoWorks" (the direct ancestor of Adobe Director) and then mailed the files on floppies to Gay, who then coded the game in 68000 Assembly Language on an Apple Lisa (a few parts like the high-score system were written in Pascal). Mark Pierce was based in San Francisco with his own company MacroMind, while Jon Gay and the rest of the Silicon Beach team were in San Diego so after an initial launch meeting, most of the collaboration between Pierce and Gay was handled remotely.
A second sequel, Return to Dark Castle, was announced in 2000, though it was not released until March 14, 2008.
A sequel titled Beyond Dark Castle was released in 1987. The game is notable for its use of sampled sounds to great effect. It was designed and illustrated by Mark Pierce and programmed by Jonathan Gay.ĭark Castle is a platform game where a young hero named Duncan tries to make his way to the evil Black Knight, dodging objects as well as solving occasional puzzles. Dark Castle is a 1986 computer game for the Macintosh published by Silicon Beach Software, later ported to various platforms, where it was published by Three-Sixty Pacific.