I urge you to check out Magic Castle, a PS1 game that just got finished & released 23 years later!

It's a super fun roguelite made on the Net Yaroze by Japanese devs who put all their hopes and dreams into this game that never came to be. Until today. http://netyaroze-europe.com/Media/Magic-Castle

Magic Castle is a roguelite where you survive through 20 floors in order to defeat the Evil Warlock. You have access to four different classes: Knight, Archer, Wizard, and Fighter. All with different abilities.

It's basically everything that people has come to love recently.

It even has super impressive features. For example, the on-screen UI can be moved around at will, so you get to choose what is the best placement for you.

It also has a really cool weapon wheel where you can access everything without going into the menu!

The music of Magic Castle is also mighty impressive! It has dynamic music that changes depending on the area you are on. So many great ideas that makes it very cool to play.

The game was supposed to be a concept to pitch to publishers so they can make it into a full game. They were very impressed but they ran into corporate issues that they couldn't handle. For example, Sony wanted them to work on a project that was unrelated instead of Magic Castle.

One of the game designers, @PIROWO1, found the source code of this game and decided to finish the project for everyone to play. I must say it is by far the best Net Yaroze game I had a chance to play.

Here's a VHS of the original presentation trailer

It is fully playable on PS1 consoles and emulators. It's very fun to play too! My first run took only one hour and a half with the Knight. On top of going through the 20 levels, you can also find some hidden tasks to increase your rank!

One of the game designers of Magic Castle, K. Matsunami ( @SG_matsu), ended up working at Sega. PIROWO ( @PIROWO1) is still working on ames to this day. The composer, hosplug ( @hosplug_hosoi) is also still a game composer. To finally see the fruit of their efforts is thrilling.

Check out the interview in more detail to show the history behind this game, and how it is finally finished after all this time. We might never got the full game they envisioned, but what they already had could have been a massive success. http://netyaroze-europe.com/Media/Magic-Castle

Please take the time to share it to retro enthusiasts and retro content creator you might know about. They might be very interested to learn about this and this game deserves to have a spotlight on it. It's really fun and worth your time, I promise

Someone made a playthrough showing some aspects of the game just today if you want to have a peek!