Same great Castlevania taste in a fresh new package.
If you recently joined us for our weeklong celebration of the Castlevania franchise and are still left wanting more, then it will interest you to know that a fan has finally finished their year-long quest to remake the NES classic original Castlevania game into an Unreal Engine 4 title.
Simply titled Castlevania, this remake is a frame for frame recreation of the 1986 title that has been lovingly adapted to run off the potent Unreal 4 Engine. The developer, known only as dejawolf, has been hammering away at the project for some time and now feels that it is close enough to completion to be ready for public consumption.
The results of his efforts are an interesting mix of nostalgia and modern technology. Don't expect a complete HD remake of the original game, as it appears that dejawolf intended to retain some design elements of the series' debut title. This is especially true of the animations which are ripped straight from the original and the game's UI which is copied and pasted from the 1986 classic.
Instead, it is the art style and lighting that are the big beneficiaries here. The new visual overlay is decidedly more modern and technologically sophisticated than the original 8-bit art style, but what it sacrifices in charm, it makes up for by serving as a faithful modern re-imagining of the original experience. This is especially true of the lighting effects which do a tremendous job of selling the spooky noir atmosphere and represent a tremendous leap forward in visual fidelity.
As for the gameplay...well, it's still Castlevania. That means you can still expect to curse at your screen as you fall victim to monsters, traps, and the occasional moment of platforming peril that makes you curse the day developers implemented the jump button. If that sounds like a good time to you, be sure to snag a free download of the game here while you still can.