In Costume Quest you play as fraternal twin siblings Reynold and Wren are new in their neighborhood and are asked by their mom to use their trick-or-treating to make new friends in the neighborhood. The player at this point chooses which sibling to play as. The two dress in their costumes, with the non-playable character dressing as a piece of candy corn and the playable character dressing as a robot. A monster with a sweet tooth sees the non-playable sibling, and kidnaps him or her. The player’s character must now save their sibling in time and be home before curfew.

You must travel around the local neighborhood collecting items for your costume, candy and fellow children as companions in order to face the monster and rescue the sibling. The costume aspects are used in battle segments, where your character and companions are transformed into the monsters and creatures they are dressed as to fight other monsters. Costume Quest incorporates elements of exploration of adventure games and character growth of role-playing video games. In the adventure part of the game, the player character explores their neighborhood, seeking out quests through trick-or-treating that reward the character with hints to the sibling’s location, more candy (a type of currency for interactions with other children), and costume parts that can be used to alter the character’s costume. The character can also befriend up to 4 non-player characters that can help with some aspects of quest solving. At times, your characters will encounter monsters, leading to the battle mode for the game. Here the children become giant versions of what costumes they are wearing, along with abilities reflected by that costume; for example, a child wearing a makeshift robot costume becomes a giant mechanized robot, while a child wearing a medieval sweater becomes a knight in armor and sword. Battles are turn-based, allowing the player to select attacks, blocks, or a special move that requires hitting a quick time event at the right moment to achieve maximum damage to their foes. Winning battles leads to additional rewards towards the player’s main quest.

Costume quest is a pretty underrated game not a lot of people talk about it or even seem to acknowledge its existence but i absolutely love this game.

Costume Quest is a just a delightfully fantastic game on XBLA and PSN, with a great art style and a pretty okay story. -Frankie