Return to Castlerama

I often wonder what the residents of Castlerama must think of me as I stumble into doorways and get stuck on invisible chunks of scenery. Do they think I'm some sort of mad man? Or just blind, bow-legged and drunk?

Then I remember there aren't any residents of Castlerama and just start to concentrate on the motion sickness instead.

This is first-person puzzle-adventure at its weakest, a muddy mix of vomit-inducing head wobble, gloomy graphics, and more text to trawl through than most books. It is, in short, utterly awful.

You play a man who inherits his father's shop, then finds some terrible mystery concealed within. This leads him on a quest around a bland fantasy world populated by about eight people with glazed dead eyes, and one horse that looks like a dinosaur.

The game is ostensibly about finding scrolls and tarot cards and solving puzzles, but often you're just wandering around with no idea what you're supposed to be doing. There are clues in the scrolls you find dotted around, but they're often vague and imprecise.

You might think that sounds like fun, but exploring empty locations to try and find something of interest is depressing enough on its own. Throw in some terrible floating stick controls that often just stop working and you're left with a recipe for frustration and anger.

There's some awful combat on offer as well. There's no weight behind it or any of your actions. You feel disembodied, as though you're disconnected from the rest of the world

There's no hand-holding or prodding from the game, which only adds to the feeling of abandonment that permeates each ugly vista. Any sense of wonder that some of the grander environments might foster is ruined by stupid controls that don't let you turn while you're running.

Return to Castlerama has pretensions of grandeur. It wants to immerse you in a deep and engaging story set in a living breathing mediaeval world. It wants you to care about what's happening. Unfortunately, it fails miserably on every count.

For every idea the game implements there's a problem, for every task it sets there's a frustration. Actions as simple as picking up an object can be infuriating, and some ill-judged leaping sections are so bad they have to be played to be believed.

There's a huge number of entertaining, beautiful, mysterious adventure games on the App Store. Return to Castlerama is not one of them. Avoid at all costs.