The Horrible Harusame Castle

The lightning strikes. The clouds shift. The faint voices of a choir sound.

A city on the edge of psychic disaster cries out for its unlikely saviors.

Ninjas? Aliens? Ghosts? Rad dudes with bad ‘tudes?

What secrets await you within the walls of Harusame Castle?

Tasty megadungeon gameplay compatible with the Shadowdark Entertainment System!

Five (5) thrilling levels of hardcore neo-feudal combat!

Zillions of items and treasures from the humble town of Fieldspring!

Allies with unfamiliar faces, and wild baddies for bustin’!

New Hit Count and spooky Ghostly mechanics make it feel like it’s real!

Don’t delay, play today, or the bland seasons will pass for so long…

                              The Horrible Harusame Castle was created for the 2026 Shadowdark 8-Bit Game Jam.

Our assigned inspiration games were The Simpsons: Bart vs the Space Mutants, Ghostbusters, and The Mysterious Murasame Castle. Our toughest constraint in this jam was the page limit, as we felt we had well over 16 pages of juicy material. In our best attempt at refinement, we identified a trio of key retro game essentials:

• Repeating variations of common enemies

• Linear progression with required boss encounters

• Key items, scattered throughout, required to win

With these three essentials in mind, we began to isolate unique elements of each game to import into the Shadowdark format. We focused on the silly tone of Bart vs the Space Mutants, as well as the helpful NPC encounters and playful items. From Ghostbusters, we echoed the raw simplicity of retro games, with a singular end point at the top of the scary stairs, and added a dash of different ghost enemies throughout. The Mysterious Murasame Castle is a treasure trove of Japanese mythology and combat, so we attempted to compress the game’s five castles into a single five-level dungeon stuffed to the gills with wave upon wave of the choicest enemies. 

Written by Peter J. Boyle and Jordy Milano

Layout and Cartography by Jordy Milano

Art by Adam Dvorak

Old Game Consulting by Tyler Newcomb

Edited by Peter J. Boyle

Playtested by The Slime Lord Sluggers

The Horrible Harusame Castle is an independent product published under the Shadowdark RPG Third-Party License and is not affiliated with The Arcane Library, LLC. Shadowdark RPG © 2023 The Arcane Library, LLC.

The Horrible Harusame Castle is a parody of retro video gaming made with great respect for the game designers who came before us. As such, no generative AI was used.

The Horrible Harusame Castle is a Normal Press Co. production.