
It feels like something from another era, when the seeds of board games like HeroQuest and roleplaying games like Call of Cthulhu were just being planted. Either way, there’s something about the concept of Escape the Dark Castle that I find compelling. It’s possibly a result of having grown up watching countless episodes of Knightmare, a television game show inspired by Dungeons & Dragons that ran from 1987 to 1998. I have no personal experiences of tabletop gaming in the 1970s and ‘80s, yet I find myself feeling nostalgic about that period of gaming all the same. Escape the Dark Castle sparks an odd kind of pleasure in me.
