My childhood memories of Halloween involve trekking through the snow in Gary, Indiana, a homemade costume on my shoulders and a plastic, pumpkin-shaped pail for collecting candy. I always thought my costume was way cooler than it was — especially since they were usually slapped together from cardboard and paint. I don’t remember ever fighting goblins, but if I had, then Costume Quest would capture the experience pretty damn well.

Costume Quest is the first downloadable release from Tim Shafer’s Double Fine Productions. While this game doesn’t quite stand up with the others on Shafer’s resume, it does have some cool ideas and fantastic presentation.

You play Reynold (or Wren), a young boy (or girl) on a quest to save your sister (or brother) from monsters who mistook the sibling for candy. Your quest takes the shape of an adventure/RPG: think the exploration The Legend of Zelda with the combat of Paper Mario. You’ll spend about two-thirds of the game exploring three worlds, looking for candy and materials to make new costumes, which can be changed out on the fly.

Costumes give you special abilities in the overworld, such as the Space Hero using his lightsaber er, um, “laser sword” to shine a light that allows you to get through dark places, or the ninja costume letting you to sneak past guards. Fortunately, the game doesn’t overuse this concept, so you’re not switching costumes every thirty seconds, which I appreciate.

Along the way, you Trick-or-Treat at houses to collect candy or find monsters looting the homes. When you go into combat, your ragtag costume becomes a towering fantasy hero: a cat ear headband and tail transforming you into a giant leopard or a plastic sword and garbage can-lid shield turning you into a knight in shining armor. The combat itself is as simplistic as can be: one normal attack and one special attack that recharges every three turns. Normal attacks can be modified with timed button presses or swiveling the left analog stick for more damage, a concept familiar to fans of Mario RPG’s.

Over the course of the game, you’ll level up (though there aren’t enough monsters to really grind, so your level will be maxed at the end of the game no matter what you do) and trade in candy for Battle Stamps that give you special attacks and stat boosts in battle. The first few fights can be tough, but defeat simply means returning to the suburban overworld, where you can go right back for a rematch in seconds. After you’ve collected a few battle stamps, the rest of the game will be a breeze.

Except for the final boss. He’s a son of a bitch.

There’s plenty to do outside of the combat system, from bobbing for apple mini-games to finding kids playing hide and seek. You get rewards for each of these things, but the side quests get tiring after a while — six hidden kids in each world, three rounds of bobbing for apples… no big surprises. What’s more fun is collecting the pieces of alternate costumes that aren’t needed to advance the plot.

The real star of the game, however, is its presentation. The game looks gorgeous, with slick cel-shaded graphics and a charming style. There is no voice acting, but the music is fun and thematic, if a bit repetitive. The writing is top notch, and made me literally laugh out loud several times.

All in all, you have a good game, but one that wears on you before it’s done. The combat is too simple to stay interesting, and wandering around whacking things with your pail to collect candy (think cutting down grass to get Rupees in Zelda) gets boring as quickly as you’d guess. I suppose the game is probably aimed at a younger audience than myself, and it would actually make a great starter RPG for kids.

But if you put those gripes aside for a few minutes, you’ll find yourself whisked back to those early days, when Halloween was less about drinking with girls in slutty outfits and all about costumes, friends, and candy. That’s a sensation that this game nails.

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Things We Liked: Fantastic art style and writing. Button presses keep you engaged in combat — for a while. Best sense of humor I’ve seen in a game in long time.

Things We Disliked: Too easy for most adults. Combat gets repetitive eventually. Not a lot of variety to side quests.

Target Audience: Kids looking for a fun RPG. Adults looking to recapture their childhoods.

(Costume Quest – Developer: Double Fine Productions. Publisher: THQ. Available for PlayStation 3 via PlayStation Network and Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade – Xbox 360 version reviewed. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes. Unfamiliar with CFD!’s review system? Read our newly revised explanation here.)