Castle: Never Judge a Book by its Cover

Decent game. I skipped one puzzle, which I rarely do, so it has to really suck for me to do that. The storyline was pretty easy and straightforward. the puzzles were hit or miss. story was ok, but a lot of characters, so it got confusing. I've never watched the show and I enjoyed the game just fine. I completed it in one sitting.

Is a very interesting HOG game genre. There are a few hard puzzle, but in general is enjoyable. Enjoy!

It's practically murder to have this game unlisted from the Steam store, and with mixed reviews no less.

With HOGs, you kind of... get used to the fact that they're not that great. They're usually a mediocre time-waster. It's usually a guilty pleasure to like these kind of games. But some fall into that rare Actually Good category, but they're so rare that it's a special treat to play an Actually Good HOG. (I say this owning over 200 HOGs.)

Castle: Never Judge a Book by Its Cover is one of those rare Actually Good hidden object games. While playing I could see there were some ties to the show (but have never watched). The puzzles are genuinely challenging at times, but the hint/skip system is robust. The story is quite good for the genre, and I am left both satisfied and wanting more. Both the characters and the game. I'm actually going to go see what platform the show is streamed on, I loved it that much.

This game is a must for anyone that enjoys HOGs. I'm confident the writing is fairly limited by comparison to what I imagine the show will have. For show fans that don't play these kinds of games, I think that this will likely feel a bit clunky and not-a-real-game to you. But if you're die-hard fan, I think you might still have some fun.

I enjoyed this story. It's pretty similar in formula to an actual episode of Castle, with a couple of fun twists and turns.

Some of the puzzles were a little rough around the edges, and a few were fairly difficult to figure out (the ball maze?), but on the whole, this was a great point-and-click mystery adventure.

This game has some unique elements to it, but without having been a fan of the television show, I doubt I would have been interested in finishing it. It's pretty though!

I enjoyed it, I've played through it twice now, and I've never heard of the TV show.

Pros:
- The detective angle is unusual and fairly satisfying. Phone calls, lab tests, autopsy results and interrogation give the experience a different feel from the run-of-the-mill HOG.
- Unique and original puzzles; I've played a lot of these games and there were several here I'd never come across before.
- Good notes system detailing all the clues you've discovered and their significance.
- Nice hidden object scenes
- Forgiving hints system

Cons:
- The puzzles can be fiendishly difficult, though there is no penalty for skipping.
- Requires quite a bit of suspension of disbelief. You're the police; you'd have thought you'd have a screwdriver handy, or be able to get hold of a ladder without having to build one!
- No achievements, collectables etc.
- A couple of silly occasions where unique items that unlocked things were found at completely different locations.
- Lacks the polish of games made by the likes of Artifex Mundi.

You're likely to enjoy it if the detective theme appeals to you. It lacks finesse, but I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the gameplay, and I appreciated the fresh puzzles.

A solid 4/10.
look hidden object games already have a ludo narrative problem. Mixing them with tv show character just makes it so... jarring... like I have to search through this man's garbage to find... I donno a screw driver. I'm in the police force gosh darn it! Couldn't I just get one from somewhere else?
I don't know... the story was being dragged by the nose, the puzzles were very hit and miss, mostly miss for me, and the hidden object was very poorly designed... I wouldn't play it unless you are trying to have a "bad game, fun date" experience.

Keep in mind that I have never watched the TV show.
One of the better HOGs, just solid in every aspect. Think like a CSI game but instead of 5 individual cases or so it's just one big case. Problem with this is that it was too thinned out near the end so you figure out who did it. There's still one nice plot twist though. I found the story compelling and I love these types of games. I just wish there was some voice acting.

I liked that the locations are fewer and more important/complex, so you don't feel you have to go through 30 different areas to get to something or use the map constantly like the Artifax Mundi games. The adventure flows seamlessly and everything makes sense. I welcomed the easier HO scenes after another game where they were the total opposite. Something that I've never seen before is that you can view the silhouette of what the items look like specifically for those that can be confused for another object. Puzzles were fun and doable. Liked the extra gameplay elements like doing the lab work and the way you interrogate the suspects. Nice way to spend an evening.

Nonsensical, even by HOPA standards. When you're trapped and battling enchantments it kinda makes sense that you're scrabbling to find coins and bits of wire in order to jury-rig a solution to a problem, but a millionaire, with the full resources of a police department, in New York? Add to that problems with pacing, such as identifying a critical location then having to visit every other location in order to jump through hoops to retrieve something you could just buy cheaply: it never really engages.


The puzzles are ok, if poorly explained, but often rely too much on either rote recall or backtracking from the end, with no tools in place to help you, and some are fairly unresponsive or outright glitchy.


So all-in-all a bit dull, really.

a lot like the facebook version but no waiting for an hour and no adverts , also different stories , im happy with it.

I'm a fan of both Hidden Objects Games and the Castle TV series and after playing through this game a couple of times I would recommend it to fans of either category.

As a game based off of the Castle series, the artist's renditions of the cast are spot on, as well as some of the familiar locales used such as Castle's loft. There is no voice acting of any sort, which is a bit of a disappointment, and would have made this a "must have" title. However, I understand that getting the actual actors to read their parts would have been far too expensive for a game of this genre, and at least they didn't try to get impersonators to read for the characters, which would have been worse. The writing isn't terrible, and it is easy to read the lines with the inflections and personality of the show's characters so that the whole game plays out like an episode of the series.

Even if you are not a fan of the HOG genre but still a fan of the show, this game is worth picking up. The HOG style lends itself well to the investigatory story style of Castle and as the Hidden Object category is a casual genre, you don't have to be good at any particular gaming skill to be able to fully enjoy this title.

As far as a Hidden Object Game goes, it's a pretty decent title to play through. If you are not a fan of the series, the characters really aren't introduced all that well, and the nuances of the characters' personalities wont come through, but those are more added flavor for the game rather than something which would impede understanding of the story as it progresses. The artwork is crisp and beautifully drawn and detailed making the actual hidden object scenes a pleasure to complete. The stand alone puzzles are nicely varied, challenge-wise, between hard and easy. There are a few real brainteasers in there which is a refreshing change from most of the elementary-only challenges that many HOGs offer. However, the item pickup and placement puzzles are where this game really falls short.

As mentioned above the hidden object puzzles are well done in this game. Not only are the pictures easy to see and objects easy to identify what they are ment to be, but there is also the added option of choosing to swap between a word list and a shadow outline of the hidden objects. I especially like this option, because if it becomes difficult to locate a particular item it gives me the opportunity to get a clue as to what the game wants me to look for before having to resort to the "hint" button which just gives the answer outright. There are also a few interactive items on each list where you have to figure out little mini-puzzles to get the correct item to show (which are a fun way to make the hidden object scene not just a clickfest for those who can't be bothered to actually find the objects in the scenes).

The stand alone puzzles are well done also. Each puzzle has an information tab which clearly describes what needs to be done with the puzzle, as well as a reset tab to start the puzzle over from scratch. And, if a puzzle just gets too complicated or frustrating, there is always the skip button to bypass the puzzle all together. As I stated before, this title offers a nice range of difficulty in its puzzles and actually had a few of the hardest puzzles I've come across in this genre. I found it refreshing that the puzzles are more geared towards adults than the over-simplified puzzles (like matching shapes or colors into their correct locales) that so many of the games in this genre seem to offer.

And then there are the item puzzles . . .

This is the one area where the game really doesn't hold up well. The item gathering and usage is simply a random mess and, as many simplistic items (like Q-tips and umbrellas) are stolen right from crime scenes, really detract from the story. It almost would have been better to drop the item-gathering-and-usage style of this genre and just tell a story inbetween the other puzzles than try and make sense of the items you do get and use in the game. There is far to much pilfering items from one crime scene to tamper with another back and forth travelling in this game. No one would travel three seperate times to a crime scene at one end of town just to get some mundane piece of tape or basic tool to then drag back to the other side of town and immediately dump off for one double-A battery or another mundane office supply. It really felt thrown together and was not thought out at all. Too bad, because this title could really have been a truly spectacular entry otherwise.

All in all I would give this title a B- or perhapse a C+ for a grade. It does have it's shortcomings, but it also has some pretty well executed features as well. This would definitely be a game to purchase when it's on sale.

I'm a fan of Castle and the dynamic between Beckett and Castle. So, when I saw the game on Steam, I've bought it. I've done two playthroughs: one in 2014 and another one yesterday, just because I needed to refresh my memory for finally writing a review about the game.

There is a serial killer that is recreating scenes from classic books. Castle and Beckett are on the case, along with Esposito, Ryan and Lanie while Gates is supervising everyone while Alexis and Martha are kinda behind... As you understand, this game is set during season 4, after Montgomery's death but before... well, as they're canon, the Caskett moment, the kiss at the end. Besides, it's the world of the edition that is targeted, hence the title Never Judge a Book by its Cover.

While the story could be converted into an episode, the gameplay is the standard one: list of items and puzzles. And while the hidden scenes are easy, the puzzles are really a brain wrecker. They're hard, except for a few. I must admit that it's one of the most difficult games that I had to play and where I skipped a lot.

Despite that, everything from the show is respected: the whiteboard with suspects, victims and clues, Castle's books or pictures, even some other references are in the hidden object scenes: the laser tag game, the writer's vest, the 3XK reference, the coffee.... And while the graphics are classic, they're respectful of the actors: you recognize easily the characters, it's always nice to see a well-represented Stana Katic as she's portraying my favorite character. My only little downside is the French translation. Indeed, you for us can be the you familiar (tu) or the formal you (vous). Castle and Beckett never used the you familiar in the French translation in the show, so, I was kinda expecting "vous" but I've seen some "tu" slipped. Besides, I agree that it would have been more logical to have a "tu" as Castle and Beckett considers themselves as best friends at this point but I don't know why officially, they've sticked to "vous".

Anyway, enough with my whining about language, I'm just sad that the original soundtrack from Castle isn't there. But well, the one in the game is still enjoyable.

Is Castle: Never Judge a Book by its Cover worthy? If you're a fan of the show, yes. If you're an hardcore gamer for casual gaming, yes. If you're a newbie, check Artifex Mundi's titles, they're easier in terms of puzzles, because Castle will probably give you a cold shower. At this price, it's perhaps a little too much.

I like hidden games and I don't mind if the story doesn't thrill me, but this one bored me. So much so that I'm not even paying attention, just clicking thigs to get them off my screen. I'm not mad I have it, it was purchased in a big sale pack of items, but I wouldn't pay for this by itself. There isn't any voice acting. If you like CSI shows try it, if not.. skip it.

I recommend buying it when it's on a big sale.

Pros:
+ large variety of puzzles including creative and logical adventure game -style puzzles
+ very similar to the series - atmosphere, setting, dialogue
+ many areas to explore
+ interaction with lab equipment


Cons:
- Short = 5h total gameplay
- No "hint" option in puzzles only "skip" (apart from hidden object puzzles)
- No original voice actors
- Very poor animations
*Spoiler alert* - Some puzzles are silly - extinguishing fire with cold soda that you have to purhase or visiting someone in a hospital and stealing equipment for no apparent reason

This is a perfectly decent HOG, with a mix of mostly okay puzzles to spice things up. There are no bugs or issues I found, the hint system works correctly (as opposed to a couple of similar games I have played recently that just shuffles you forward and backward between two adjacent rooms in a few places leaving you to work it out or find a walkthrough), and the HOG scenes are reasonably naturalistic (no over-hiding of objects in unrealistic positions, or too many anachronistic/out of place items for the location). The storyline is fine and keeps things moving, but nothing too special (note I haven't got around to watching any of the TV series the game is based on, so I didn't get much benefit from the characters interactions, YMMV if you are a fan).

For me the biggest weakness of the game is the point and click sections in between the rest of the game - while it all works fine and is easy enough to play and you have the hint system if you get stuck on what to do next, most of the tasks you have to do are complete nonsense, illogical and immersion breaking - you will spend a lot of time solving puzzles and searching crime scenes not for clues, but for screwdrivers, fuses, batteries, hammers, oars (to form part of a jury-rigged ladder!), and most bizarrely there is an entire section where you solve puzzles, dig up plant beds and drain a washing machine in order to find $2 to buy a soda to cool down a BBQ to get a pair of tongs.

In a setting where you are trapped in a murderer's house, or in a tiny village miles from nowhere, or whatever, these sorts of scavenging tasks wouldn't feel out of place as you don't have any choice, but in a scenario where you are in the middle of a city and can travel about at will it make no sense that you spend 75%+ of the time while trying to track down an active murderer rummaging about for things you could buy from the local convenience store, or by having a toolbox in the back of your car. Joint worst for this goes to using a cotton swab found lying around at a previous crime scene in the crime lab (well no risk of contamination of the sample there!), and pulling the lever off the wall in the church which you later use to operate heavy machinery at a construction site.

If you can look past this though, the game plays well enough, so I would still recommend it if you like the HOG style of game, you just have to try to gloss over the why of most of what you are doing and go with it.

Having clicked 'No', I will add the proviso that I WOULD recommend 'Castle: Never Judge a Book by its Cover', but ONLY to fans of the 'Castle' TV series! Anyone else should probably avoid.

Whilst I enjoyed the game, that was primarily because, as a fan, I recognised the in-jokes to some of the episodes of the series and the faithfully recreated scenes from the sets of the show.

The gameplay itself is a bit lacklustre. Most of the game is spent playing the missing objects mechanic whereby you pick out a small list of items from a large screen full of stuff. A bit 'Where's Waldo', but fine, although this does get tedious rather fast. Of more promise are the many little logic puzzle games which are many and varied - most are familiar and simple, but some are a bit more challanging. The only downside to these logic puzzles is that the 'Hint' mechanic allows you to completely skip the games, thus rendering them utterly pointless.

And here we get to the big drawback to this game: the 'Hint' mechanic. In most games where hints are given, usually you get actual 'hints' to what to do, but leaving you to continue to work things out. In 'C:NJaNbiC' the 'Hint' machinic leads you around by the hand. Not sure what you should be doing? 'Hint' Go here, do this. Can't solve this puzzle mini-game? 'Hint' Solved. Really, the button should be labelled 'Bored Now' or 'Too Lazy'.

I bought the game with the understanding that there would be no animations, just still scenes, but I was disappointed that there was NO actual voice-acting at all. The entire game takes place in virtual silence, with some barely adequate, low-key synth music to fill the void of all the text boxes as the characters 'talk'. This is a real shame since the game is based on the 'Castle' TV show which has characters with distinct and charming voices, so why not get them doing some voice acting for the game? And the synth music is hardly inkeeping with the music used throughout the TV series, which is chock full of funky current music tracks. I guess the licensing costs too much?

As already mentioned, there were no animations, it was all character portraits and still scene imagery, but the game would certainly have benefited from animated characters and backdrops. But hey, costs, what can you do?

And finally, lets mention length. It's short. I played it through in 4 hours, and that was by doing ALL the puzzles. If I skipped through all the ones I had trouble with, that time would probably have been halved. Considering that the game is made without animation or sound content, could they perhaps not have made futher episodic iterations with new games or mechanics to it? Shame, as that might have made it worth the money, to have further stories to work through, like actually playing a season of 'Castle', with themes continued in subsequent episodes. That would at least have given the game a lift in it's simplistic and obvious storytelling.

Which leads me to what is probably the biggest issue I had with the game: the story. Without spoiling it, I will say that it was obivous from very early on what the situation was and who the killer was - Ok, so that reguarly occurs in episodes of the show where you can guess who-dunnit, but the story doesn't do anything clever with it, and comes to a boring and obvious conclusion. For a game based on a TV series with pretty decent storylines, and featuring a professional Author, it commits the ultimate sin of 'poor story telling', and that's the final nail in the coffin.

To summarise: the game has some fun little puzzles and recognisable scenes/characters from the TV series, but lack of good sound, animation and poor storytelling make it very bland, and the short, limited story is too brief, with no hope of any kind of replayability. For a casual game, it's... Okay. Ish. For a point & click game, it's... Poor.

One to avoid.

I'm on the fence about whether to recommend this game, or not. (i.e. Yes, with caveats)

Playing this game with no awareness previously that there even was a TV show called Castle probably meant that I missed a lot of the inside jokes/character interplay. On the other hand, the game was constantly offering to skip dialogue so maybe the game designers didn't consider it to be of high value either.

In general, this is a Hidden Objects game. It's dead center in the middle of the genre, playing a lot like a PC Adventure game but with a lot more backtracking and one shot objects to solve specific situations. It was OK as a Hidden Object game. (Lots of chaotic jumbled scenes, very few AHA! moments when I suddenly recognized new patterns.) The puzzles were either fairly simple/straightforward, or extremely tedius where a monkey could solve them, given sufficient persistance and ability to randomly click. Luckily there was the SKIP/Hint feature in the tedious cases.

The overall plot was very interesting; but the game had some specific irritant gotchas (for me at least), such as allowing us to use a potentially contaminated Q-tip swap from a crime scene as part of DNA lap work for a different piece of evidence. There were several instances where it felt like they were trying to play with the lab equipment, but it didn't really add to the overall plot. (Possibly a reference from the TV show I'm unaware of.) I really enjoyed the Literatured Themed Murders (Hard Back Killer), but very quickly all the details blurred together and I didn't see how the selected quotes, etc. really added much. (As demonstrated when they summarized them out of existence on the Evidence board.)

Final Score: 3/5 Stars.

I would definitely recommend other Hidden Object games ahead of this one. It felt like this was a product bundle with a known franchise with an OK game. Don't buy this one for $10.

P.S. I did enjoy the fact that you could view your Hidden Objects search list by both English name, and by visual Silhouette. (I rarely used this feature, but this is the first gave where I've seen it.)

This game went down way too fast and I purposely played through this slowly. I like hidden object games and this one did not dissapoint. Some of the puzzles were bizzare but the story made up for it. I have only watched enough of the show to know Castle is not a cop but a writer and the game was still good casual fun. Get it on sale and enjoy it for what it is. I'd love to see a new chapter to download or new story arc that would be nice.

Bought during the sale and I am glad I did. As a big fan of the show, this kept me entertained (and frustrated in a few spots) for many hours. The story was engaging and I liked the style. The only things that bothered me are that, like a lot of seek and find type games, it can get a bit repetative and some of the puzzles were mind-numbingly hard. Otherwise a fun game and worth buying if you like the game style.

It wasn't till today i realized Castle had a game! I was really excited and decided to buy the game at the first chance i got. I was blown away by the characters and the story plot. It was such a twist! Really enjoyed it! Better than i expect it! Music may repeat itself from time to time entering a new cast but you can overcome that, So far best crime solving game ever! #CaskettAlways