Costume Quest 2 preview: a sweet escape

Halloween is upon us and that means it's time to return to the whimsical world of Costume Quest. Double Fine surprised a lot of people with the announcement for the sequel to the 2010 original RPG. So to find out if the trick-or-treat haul is just as sweet the second time around, Shacknews went hands-on with the latest version of the game at this week's GameStop Expo.

The story for Costume Quest 2 is delightfully absurd, as the evil dentist Orel White D.D.S. is on a mission to put an end to Halloween, costumes, and candy forever. To do so, he recruits a time wizard to send him back into the past, where he grabs a magic talisman. After summoning a horde of monsters, Halloween is no more, meaning twins Wren and Reynold must likewise venture back in time and put an end to White's plans, in order to save Halloween.

The Costume Quest experience is largely unchanged from the original. The game largely revolves around turn-based combat, centering around timed hits, albeit with a slight change in when the player is supposed to hit the right button. Just as in the first game, each character will enter battle by transforming into their costume. For example, Wren will go in as a superhero, with her attacks reflecting her attire. So if you've played the first game, combat will be very familiar.

One of the main differences from the original Costume Quest is, this time, both twins will be on the adventure together. However, this leads to one of the more humorous running gags of my time with the game. Reynold will still be donning his candy corn costume, meaning he'll entire each battle as a literal piece of candy corn. Whenever his turn comes up, a snarky comment will appear over Reynold's head in the form of a candy corn fun fact before ceding his turn. He'll still be targeted and can still defend himself, so think of Reynold as a decoy, at least for the first part of the game.

The other addition to the battle system is a card system that offers supplemental boosts. Unfortunately, I didn't actually encounter any of these cards, so I wasn't able to try this aspect of the game out.

Quests, for the most part, operate as they did in the first game and serve as a good way to recruit new party members. One of the first quests saw me helping a kid find pieces of his clown costume that were taken by nearby gators. This helped demonstrate some of the additions to the game's movement, in that there's now a dash move in place (through the power of heely shoes) to help jump ramps and generally explore faster.

After helping the kid find pieces of his clown costume, he joined my party and took part in battles. His clown costume was useful in that he could attack more than once and also in that his special ability would heal the entire party.

Other aspects of the first game will make their return, including the need to trick-or-treat to complete certain tasks. Candy, as always, is king and Costume Quest 2 looks to offer plenty of ways to collect it, such as bashing pinatas located throughout the world.

Fans of the original Costume Quest appear to have every reason to get excited for the next game in the series. Costume Quest 2 will arrive on PC, Mac, and Linux on October 7 and is available for pre-order on Steam right now.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?