Castle Wolfenstein is a combination action and adventure game. It is set in World War II during Hitler's reign of terror. The objective of the game is to traverse all the levels of the castle and find the secret war plans and escape alive.
The game features a top-down view of each room on the level, though the characters are seen upright like in a side-scroller. The player tries to traverse the levels by stealth, impersonation and sometimes killing opponents. The game is controlled via a joystick and the keyboard. The player successfully completes the game by finding the plans hidden in a chest and escaping without being captured.
Upon entering the castle, where the game begins, the player is equipped with a small number of passes and a gun. Passes are used for each level of the castle to provide authorization. There are five possible passes, one for each level of the castle, but the pass numbers do not correspond to the level (for example, pass 3 might be the correct pass for level 1).
Upon encountering the first guard, the player must try to show the correct pass or kill the guard before being captured or allowing the guard to raise the alarm. Once the player determined the correct pass for a level, they could safely traverse that level by showing it to any other guards he might encounter. For each new level of the castle, he needs to determine the correct pass.
The player can attempt to kill enemy characters (guards) in two ways. Employing stealth, the player can stab a guard in the back with his dagger (which he must obtain from killing an SS guard). The somewhat easier way is to just shoot the guard, but this expends bullets, a scarce commidity in the game, and risks raising the alarm if another guard is present in the room. The gaurds die with a scream of, "Aieegh!" which is made even more chilling by the raspy quality of the digital sample. Once an enemy soldier is dispatched, his body can be searched for bullets, keys, money, grenades and additional passes.
Guards do not always have to be killed, however. Once the player shows the correct pass, the guard will ignore them and the player's traversal of the room is unhampered. The player can still choose to kill the guard at this point, but it is not strictly necessary.
Some rooms contain locked chests which can be picked and searched. Some are empty, but some contained useful items such as passes, bullets, first aid kits, grenades or money.
Though the game's graphics are dated—and almost comical—by today's standards, they were acceptable for an Apple II game. And though the game suffered from some technical idiosyncrasies (for example, bumping into a wall caused the screen to flash random characters and generated a screaching sound), it still gained appeal. One of the main drawing points for fans was its use of digitized voices—an unprecedented technical achievement. Though the voices were scratchy and almost unintelligible because of the Apple II's limited sound facilities, they were good enough for such a break-through effect.
Muse followed Castle Wolfenstein with Beyond Castle Wolfenstein which was almost identical in terms of game play and appearance. The objective of that game was to kill the Führer himself.
But Castle Wolfenstein's greatest legacy was inspiring the break-through game Wolfenstein 3D by id Software. Though id's game shared a partial name with Castle Wolfenstein, its game play, plot and look and feel were vastly different. Wolfenstein 3D initiated the first-person shooter genre on the PC which is still healthy to this day. Few fans of Wolfenstein 3D know of its digital pedigree, but, besides being an entertaining game in its own right, inspiring the seminal Wolfenstein 3D is probably Castle Wolfenstein's greatest gift to computer gaming.Description
Picking a chest in the castleGameplay
Searching a dispatched guardAnalysis
Legacy