Matthew Bailey“Ghost Castle” is the latest release of a classic game, originally published in 1970 under the name “Which Witch?”.
The game revolves around players trying to escape a haunted castle while a ball beaning is dropped down, rolling around and potentially knocking over your characters as you try to make your way out.
Michelle Louise wrote a great review of this a while back (which you can find in the archive pinned at the top) but I’ve seen this game on sale everywhere lately, so I thought I’d give it a go, even though I never actually had it as a child. That’s surprising, as it’s exactly the sort of thing I would have wanted from my parents back in the late ‘80s.
The first thing you notice when you open the box is the amount of construction required. Think “Mouse Trap” vibes, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the setup time. The game board is actually made from the box itself, which explains the rather unusual photo I’ve used for this review—I can’t take a picture of both the box and the game at the same time!
It’s actually quite fun to put together, and once it’s constructed, it’s surprisingly sturdy, considering it’s made from relatively thin cardboard.
On your turn, you roll the dice and choose one of your two characters to move, with the goal of escaping the castle. The winner is the first player to make it out.
If you land on a red danger square, you use the big ghost at the top, which has a marble in it. You press the button, and the marble drops into the central mechanism, randomly triggering one of four traps in the different quadrants of the “castle.”
Now, I have to point out my first issue—this is not a castle. As someone from the UK, I know what castles look like, and this is definitely a haunted house. It’s complete with the moulded top part of the house and everything inside. In reality, this could easily pass for something out of Scooby-Doo or The Addams Family, and it would work just as well.
There’s a small amount of strategy in avoiding certain spaces. Since you can choose between two characters, you can try to avoid danger zones when you roll the dice. However, this is essentially a simple roll-and-move game, not too dissimilar to Snakes and Ladders, so don’t expect any deep strategy.
I was surprised that the original release had an age rating of 6 and above, because in reality, if you can count to three, you can play this game. I didn’t play it with my youngest, Henry, but he definitely could have managed it.
The main mechanism of the rolling ball is actually quite cool. Watching it knock over pieces, trigger the unstable floor, swipe players away, or roll down the stairs is great fun. The game has a really fun, toy-like quality that I can’t fault.
Unfortunately, that’s where the praise ends. The game is long, drawn-out, and honestly not that interesting once you’ve seen the traps in action a couple of times. It gets tedious, especially during the longer sections, where players repeatedly get stuck and knocked back.
The official rules state that if you’re on a red space when the marble rolls into your quadrant, you have to go back. However, we modified it so that if the ball somehow misses your space (which does occasionally happen), you stay in place. This sped up the game a bit, which was definitely needed by that point.
Even with our modified rules, a full playthrough took around 40 minutes, which felt like ages. Part of the reason is that every time the ball rolls down, you have to reset the traps, and some of them—like the axe trap—are tricky to reset and were a real pain to get back onto their little cardboard pieces.
Would I recommend “Ghost Castle”? It’s a bit tricky. As a game, no, it’s not great. But as a toy, it’s actually quite fun. Oddly, I think it’s more valuable as a piece of scenery for kids to play with Halloween action figures or toys. It could be used to create a Halloween scene or as a starting point for a better game of their own design.
So, no, I wouldn’t recommend “Ghost Castle” as a game. But if you find it on a super sale, it might be worth picking up as a creative tool or toy for kids who enjoy making their own Halloween setups.
