But then, as I passed Hoxton Post Office, I saw another round metal plate on the corner of Fanshaw St marking the site of Benjamin Pollock’s shop.Įven when Stevenson came here, he knew that Benjamin Pollock’s shop was the portal to an earlier world, because the theatres of his childhood that he purchased in a shop on Leith Walk in Edinburgh were produced by Skelt’s Juvenile Drama and the names on the printing plates were altered with successive owners, “This national monument, after changing its name to Park’s, Webb’s, Reddington’s and last of all to Pollock’s, has now become, for the most part, a memory”, he wrote.Ĭoincidentally, it was Mr W.Webb’s great granddaughter, the legendary publisher Kaye Webb (who edited, Lilliput in the forties, Picture Post in the fifties and Puffin Books in the sixties and seventies), who first took me seriously as a writer and was the first to publish my works. By now, the snow was falling fast, so I decided that I should be satisfied with this discovery and turned back towards Spitalfields. I crossed the road to read a metal plate there which, contrary to my expectation, explained this was the site where the letter was read discovering the Gunpowder Plot. Walking past the Job Centre and Hackney College, I quickly found numbers 74 and 76, but to my disappointment I saw a recent housing development on the other side of the street without any numbers. Hoxton St has even numbers on the east side and odd numbers on the west. Although Pollock’s Toy Theatres survived at this address into the twentieth century, I knew the shop was gone but I wanted to find the site. So you will understand why it was of interest to me to find 73 Hoxton St. I too was an only child who was enchanted by the magic of toy theatres, especially at Christmas and it was the creation of these dramas that led to my first career, as a playwright. Stevenson was an only child who played with toy theatres to amuse himself in the frequent absences from school due to sickness, when he was growing up in Edinburgh.
“If you love art, folly or the bright eyes of children speed to Pollock’s” he wrote in his essay “A penny plain, tuppence coloured” – referring to the prices of the printed sheets in their hand-coloured and plain versions. But it has to be said, if it’s the only thing you are going to offer, you have to go all out.Yesterday as the first snowflakes of the winter spiraled out of a pale sky, I walked up through Spitalfields towards Hoxton following in the footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson who came here to 73 Hoxton St in 1884 to visit Benjamin Pollock’s Toy Theatre Shop. We get that platformers aren’t usually a vehicle for gripping stories, aside from more Recent titles like Ratchet and Clank: A Rift Apart for example. The story is that you have been sucked into an enchanted world and you will need to fight your way through the beasts and baddies of this land to get back. The only unique thing about this game is the storyline but sadly, the story is bare bones. Enchanted Portals fails to understand this nuance and while the game plays fine and is fun, it feel dirty in some strange way. It’s similar but not to the point of copying. Just look at Fenyx Immortals and Breath of the Wild. However, there is a correct way to include mechanics from other IP’s and this isn’t it. For that reason, the combat and platforming feel clean and crisp.
Then as for gameplay, Enchanted Portals has just copied Cuphead’s homework again. Plus, the magical focus of the storyline gives this visual showcase a little bit of a unique feel, but not much as far as Cuphead is concerned.
It offers the same 50’s style, lower FPS animation along with vibrant cartoonish assets which bring the settings and the stages to life. However, if we are looking through an objective lens, we have to say that this game looks the part. It’s hard to give this game as much praise as it deserves as it has taken so much inspiration from Cuphead that it reads as a pure copycat operation. Ok, so let’s talk about the visuals first of all.
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