Just in time for Halloween comes Spirits and Spells, a kid-oriented platformer about a group of kids dressed in Halloween garb and looking for treats. However, while coming upon a house in the dark woods, most of them are turned into stones by the Bogeyman, and it is up to the survivors Alicia and Greg to enter the World of the Dead and rescue their friends. Only one person is allowed to enter the world (conveniently enough), but at any time, you can switch between the two characters provided you have enough magic crystals.

Switching between the characters is the heart of the Spirits and Spells since you'll have to utilize the unique skills of each character to get past puzzles and obstacles. Alicia, for instance, is an ice witch who throws her hat to hit enemies at a distance, can walk on ice and turn water into ice by hitting magic blue pumpkins, and can pass unnoticed among witches for a brief period of time. Greg is her fire counterpart, who has short-range attacks with his pitchfork, can walk through fire, and can pass unnoticed amidst the imps for a few seconds. Later on in the game, each character is upgraded with a couple new moves: Alicia can shrink herself to get into secret passageways, and Greg develops a super jump to get over high obstacles.

It's fairly obvious in the game when to use which character (hmm... I see a fire path ahead of me, I wonder who I should use), but the game restricts you from switching between the characters without abandon by incorporating a magic crystal system. You'll see magic crystals scattered liberally throughout the levels, and each set of 30 that you collect allows you to switch between the characters once. Conserving the crystals isn't too much of an issue because there are so many crystals, but you'll run into trouble if you recklessly swap between Alicia and Greg and waste all your switches.

What I especially like about this gameplay mechanic is that the game rewards you for having crystals by making navigation through the levels theoretically easier. You'll see what I mean by theoretically later, but stay with me here. For example, if you come across the shores of a lake and have to make your way to the other side, you can take the long way by jumping across platforms guarded by attacking trees. But provided you have enough crystals to switch to Alicia (or are already using her), all you have to do is hit the magic blue pumpkin, which taps into her powers and transforms the lake into ice. Or, say, you see a pitch-dark passageway coming up. By switching to Greg and hitting the fire pumpkin, you'll light up the room to see where you're going, whereas if you don't have any crystals, you better hope you can blindly find the exit without falling into any holes.

The game sounds great so far, right? In theory, the game would be a blast, taking advantage of the characters' respective skills to complete the levels. But the problems start once you actually play the game. Considering that Spirits & Spells is directed towards kids, you would expect simple, rather linear gameplay, which is true. There's basically only one way through the levels, and the game has simple platforming challenges that we've all seen before, such as avoiding falling rocks by stepping away from the shadows and jumping quickly away from hanging platforms before they drop to the ground. But what you wouldn't expect from a kid's game is the difficulty, caused by all the wrong reasons.

Let's start with the camera. Perhaps in an effort to reduce the complexity of the game, Dreamcatcher decided not to put in a player-controlled camera. Rather, the fixed camera follows behind the character and automatically tilts to the side when making turns. Occasionally for extended jumping sequences, the camera zooms overhead to "help" you make it across. The problem is that what the camera thinks is the optimal angle to proceed through the levels isn't always the case. Many times you'll be faced with blind jumps, forcing you to jump into who-knows-where and hoping you'll land on solid ground. With the camera angle that is provided, it's also difficult to judge the depth of the 3D platforms and the relative distance between them.

I'm no slouch at platformers, but when I think of Spirits & Spells, I painfully remember dying, and dying a lot. I'm all for challenging games, but it's a problem when the difficulty stems from inherent problems in the game rather than my inability to get through tricky parts. Hit detection isn't accurate as I'll whip an approaching skeleton and clearly make contact, but the unbothered skeleton walks into me and kills me. There is no health bar for the characters, so with one hit of the enemy or one failed jump, back to the checkpoint you go. There are a limited number of lives and once those are depleted, you have to repeat the entire level. Hurrah! You'll see the same segments of levels over and over until you lose all your lives. Then you'll replay the level until you reach that same segment, only to die again. All in all, the game is extremely frustrating and nearly unplayable at times.

Technical aspects of Spirits & Spells are nothing to brag about either. While there are some flashy particle and fire effects, textures are bland and the game looks like it belongs on the Nintendo 64. Many parts of the game are abnormally dark, which inflates the difficulty even more since you'll have to hop platforms that are barely visible. Music consists of a couple tracks looped over and over, which, in a dynamic duo with the gameplay, gradually wears down your nerves and patience

It is difficult for me to recommend Spirits & Spells to anyone. I can't possibly imagine anybody, let alone the target audience of kids, that would be willing to stick with the game. The characters are cutesy, but the gameplay will give kids nightmares. The character switching mechanic had so much potential but is cheapened with the bad camera and bland puzzles. It's best to leave this one on the shelf.

Our Final ScoreBad

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