Hello! Matt Kap here again, with another dev blog about Castle In The Darkness! Today I'll talk about the game's world!

This game is split up into areas, but it's also a large open world. Before describing any further, I'll show you guys a zoomed out map of the entire game.

To give you a sense of scale, that red mark on the bottom left is about the size of one screen, so there is a LOT of area to explore in Castle In The Darkness! Of course, you don't have to explore at all, you could take a straightforward path to the end, but you will find that by skipping all the secrets and upgrades, the game will become hard REAL quick.

Sometimes, certain obstacles will be unpassable, so you will be forced to take a different path, then return later on once you are able to pass the obstacle. These types of games usually require some backtracking. Luckily, there is an item you will obtain part-way into your journey that will facilitate this:

This is the warp stone! Once you get this item, you will be able to use warp points scattered across the world to travel, first to a place called Warp Zone, and from there you wil be able to warp back to any of the warp points.

Warp points are similar to save points, but with a different colored crystal. Without the warp stone, the crystals will not be able to take you anywhere, and will appear as plain rocks. Using the warp stone will make it easier to traverse such a large world, and who knows, Warp Zone may also be hiding secrets of its own!
(And maybe those secrets also have secrets...!)

As usual, thanks for checking this out! Just to remind everyone reading, the game will be out on Steam TOMORROW! Please come back to this blog in the future for more updates, even AFTER release! Till next time!