Costume Quest

Isn't it enough to instill joy? Should any of that other stuff matter if at the end of the day, a video game can leave you completely delighted? These are questions that Costume Quest brought up in my mind, but ultimately, the charm and wonder of the world in which this game takes place is an overriding factor, something that mechanics or graphics or whatever other metric reviewers use to determine a game's worth can't supercede.

This shouldn't really come as any surprise – Costume Quest was developed by Tim Schafer's Double Fine studio, and Schafer and his cohorts have been happy to deliver slightly warped, if still totally engrossing and likable games that no one else in the business seems to be able to match for creativity and straight-up quality. Costume Quest in particular was directed by Tasha Harris, a former Pixar animator whose modus operandi was to capture nostalgia and turn it into video game form, while still maintaining a modern sensibility.

She's succeeded. Costume Quest isn't just a slathering of sepia-toned nostalgia for the bygone era of childhood and homemade Halloween costumes, but a real, affirming game for children and their parents, one that encourages play and wonder. It's also not a straight rip of the games it so heavily quotes (Earthbound, Zelda, Super Mario RPG and Dragon Warrior/Quest, mostly), but it takes elements from those games and synthesizes them into something both familiar and delightfully idiosyncratic. And all of these elements, but especially the fantastic writing from Mr. Schafer, combine to make Costume Quest a whimsical and delightful adventure.

That adventure is told with a surprising amount of wit and humanity and truthfulness: Costume Quest sees you playing as either Reynold or Wren. Once you've chosen who you're going to play as (my girlfriend chose Wren), you have to save your brother or sister from the Grubbins, who are ogre-like creatures who are stealing candy for nefarious purposes. This means that you have to travel your town, trick-or-treating, collecting candy and powerups to try to save your sibling.

Assisting you along the way are your magical Halloween costumes that transform into hilarious, Godzilla-sized caricatures of their original designs when you enter into any of the turn-based battles in the game. Sure, the battles are pretty simple timed-button press affairs in the vein of the aforementioned Super Mario RPG, but they're also just really fun to watch because of the warped sense of humour surrounding everything. Seeing your Statue of Liberty costume perform its healing move in a flurry of American flags, bald eagles and Abraham Lincoln heads, is hilarious every time, and some of the costumes, such as the robot mech costume, are always super cool.

In fact, that's the one element that makes going through Costume Quest's many sidequests (usually simple, "find this item" affairs) so much fun: the promise of new costumes. Even if a particular costume isn't all that useful, it's still neat to see how they'll transform and what they'll do. In other words, it creates a legitimate system for your progression, something that is usually handled a lot less whimsically in the JRPGs that Costume Quest is paying homage to.

The idea that seems to surface when discussing this game, though, is that it's too simple. There's nothing to hold the interest of an adult for very long because it's very much geared towards (bright) kids. That's absolutely not the truth though. Costume Quest was never meant to be the epic-lengthed adventure that it quotes from. Instead, it's an entry point for modern kids to see elements of past video game design brought into a modern context. It also helps that the game isn't overly punitive. Outside of small difficulty spike about halfway through the game, the progression is fast-paced, full of things to do and very satisfying.

Normally, I might not like that a game is playing outside the bounds of its premise with regards to its handling of failure, but Costume Quest is such a gentle, fun, entertaining game that to unfairly punish the player would seem even more out-of-step with the overall whimsical design structure. Sure, this sort of thing might not survive without the strength of world-building and writing and design that's on display here, but that's the stuff that Double Fine was always going to nail – why not rely on it?

Because if there's a master video game writer working today, it's Tim Schafer. Who else in the video game industry has such iconic and hilarious writing? Nobody. And making a game that taps into elements that both he and his development studio are perfect for has made a game that I can't really find any fault with. It's a nostalgic romp through extremely polished gameplay. More jaded gamers are raised on the idea  that delight and whimsy mean a lack of depth and uninteresting games, but the simple joys of Costume Quest are more than enough to quell that delirious idea.