Maldita Castilla - The Spanish Ghosts'n Goblins

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Hello everyone! After my first entry dedicated to the remake of the great classic Barbarian, I decided to dedicate the second entry of the blog to a indie game “Made in Spain” that shows that in Spain there are also good game developers, and no, I´m not referring to the loved by many (including myself) and hated by many others Castlevania Lords of Shadow, that one already got enough support from Kojima Productions, I´m talking about Maldita Castilla (Curse/Damn Castile). If you haven´t stopped reading already, maybe some of you though “An indie game developed in Spain? I guess it must be some kind of small silly game for smartphones.” If so, well, then you guessed wrong. Wholly developed by a single Spanish indie game developer called “Locomalito”, Maldita Castilla is an ode to classic arcade 2D platform games from the arcades golden era, and specifically to the Ghost N Goblins series developed by Japanese game´s titan Capcom. But far from being just a simple tribute, Maldita Castilla offers a solid experience in the vein of the classics of old times, designed with absolute care for every single detail, and the best of all is that is FREE, something very uncommon in these times of DLCs and microtransactions, specially since it easily can look face to face to some other professional productions. I´m gonna try to explain of the many virtues of this small jewel on the independent game scene.

Don Ramiro gets ready to fulfill his holy mission.

One of the game´s bosses... I thought I saw a pussy cat!

Let´s start from the beginning. The game´s story setting. Evil is spreading through the lands of Castile, with demons and the like of roaming the lands freely, forcing king Alfonso VI of León to ask Don Ramiro, the bravest knight of all those living in the kingdom, and his men to go on a holy journey to get rid of the evil that is spreading through Castile. Period. Why more? Following the style of the old arcade classics, Maldita Castilla provides just enough story to start “delivering holy justice.” As I mentioned at the beginning, Maldita Castilla is a 2D platform game in the vein of the old time arcade classics. The game has 5 levels that will take us through forests, castles, caves, swamps and cursed villages as we try to fulfill our holy mission, and if we find the Moura Tears hidden in each level, we will unlock a sixth and last level which will take place in Hell. Each level has its own enemies, half-stage bosses and final bosses, which go from cursed armors and manticores, to giant worms and turtles, wizards, ghosts. Of course, as a the game based on the Spanish medieval times that it is, it also had to include its own version of Don Quixote, in this case with a (even more) mad version of the famous Spanish knight. The levels are all full of secrets that will allow the players to obtain recovery items or extra lives, and trust me, you will need them, oh yes you will, for Maldita Castilla is an extremely unforgiving and cruel game, and far from trying to please the audience offering them an “easy ride,” as the good disciple of Ghost N Goblins that it is, the game is designed for hardcore gamers looking for a real challenge (a.k.a. enemies that spawn right at the moment you are jumping to make you fall in a pit and die, among other lovely things), so I advise all those of you with a "tendency for quick temper" to buy a few spare controllers/keyboards just in case... I mean, sometimes controllers "just brake," if you know what I mean... Just as Sir Arthur in Ghost N Goblins, Don Ramiro will be able to make use a of variety of weapons and items that he will be able to find during the levels, from daggers and exes to shields that will give us an extra protection against the enemies attacks, each with their own unique good and bad points that will be more of less useful depending on the situation we are dealing with. And if all this was not enough, Maldita Castilla offers several endings which we will be able to access to depending on the achievements we fulfilled during the game, like for example gathering all the hidden Moura Tears in order to unlock the final level, so if finishing the game was already difficult enough, witnessing the “real ending” will be an even bigger feat.

Old school manual. Watch and learn Ubisoft/EA!

Finally, far from being satisfied by creating this small gaming jewel all by himself, Locomalito has designed with the help of artists Marek Barej and Jacobo Garcia all type of material related to the game, such as posters, signs for arcade cabinets, a cover for the DVD box and disc in case we decide to create our own physical version of the game, and last, but not least, a GORGEOUS full color manual (did you read this Ubisoft? And you EA?) in PDF format that, rather than just explaining the controls of the game, it provides all kind of information and art related to the world of Maldita Castilla. In fact, Locomalito is so creative that even when asking for a donation he does it with style, and is that the manual has a couple of pages that “have been burned,” and only after we donate some money to the creator we will receive a complete version of this gorgeous manual. Anyway, here you have the link to the website of Locomalito where you can download Maldita Castilla and all the extra material mentioned before, as well as other cool old school games designed by this great indie game designer: http://www.locomalito.com/maldita_castilla.php. If you like old school arcade games, you have to try this one, I´m sure it won´t disappoint you! And if it does... Well, IT´S FREE!


GAMEPLAY VIDEO:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC_n_0k9EI8