Castle Story

What we have with Castle Story is a game that is very charming and very addictive. It is all about building and defending your castle and it is something that I will admit I did not expect much from, but each time I have played this I have found myself having a great time. If you like building games and games that have a little bit of RTS (but not too much) then this is a game you are going to have some real fun with.

Those Pesky Corruptrons!

There is not some big epic story in Castle Story, but there is still a great deal of charm to the premise of the game. The idea is that you control a bunch of these happy-go-lucky guys that are called Bricktrons. These guys are happy to explore, gather, build and just live their life.

However, there are some bad guys called the Corruptrons that are having none of that and want to destroy your castle and kill all of your smiling and happy Bricktrons…. Screw those guys!

Know Your Bricktrons

There are three different types of Bricktron in the game. You have a “worker” these guys are happy to go and gather supplies and build for you. You also have a warrior and an archer, one offering close-ranged combat and the other attacking from a distance. There are two types of Corruptrons that you have to worry about. The normal ones are small and unless there is a ton of them are easy to deal with. Larger ones can kill your Bricktrons in one hit so you certainly want to take them out at a distance.

Cute, But Deadly

I have to say that at first glance Castle Story is not exactly going to blow you away with the way it looks. However, I am going to say a word that I have already used a few times in this review and that is “charm”. This game is very charming and I like the way it has a rather basic kind of look to it all and how things are bright and colorful. I do think that the soundtrack could be a tad more upbeat and whimsical to go with the visuals though.

Playing The Right Way

In Castle Story, you have three game modes that you can take part in. Sandbox mode is basically like creative mode Minecraft. Here you do not have to worry about combat and you are free to just mess around and try and build cool castles and other stuff that you can come up with. Conquest mode has crystals scattered around the map and the goal here is to lead your Bricktrons to them and capture as many as you can. Invasion mode is my favorite! Here you build a castle and then you have to defend it from waves of enemies that are coming to destroy it! There is also a multiplayer component on offer here where you can compete or battle against each other.

Pros:

• I think the Bricktrons have a lot of personality
• The game is easy to get into
• Building castles feels very therapeutic
• Each game mode is fun in its own way

Cons:

• The multiplayer scene for this game feels pretty dead
• I do wish it had a bit of a story to it

One of the first games on offer in Steam’s Early Access program, Castle Story is a part of gaming history when crowd-funded games were all the rage. With a similar vibe to Towns, Terraria, as well as many other indie games, Castle Story gives players a unique blend of Minecraft and a real-time strategy game. Players can expect a brightly coloured challenge as they fend off the invading hordes of Corruptrons with their fortifications, battlements and Bricktron soldiers.

Storm the Castle

The main meat behind Castle Story is the strategy. While the game does offer a sandbox mode for more easy-going players, the challenge comes in through the game’s Invasion and Conquest modes. While not exactly Starcraft, Castle Story does offer enough of a challenge to make it accessible to vast majority of gamers.

To start, players can use developer maps, user generated maps and even find maps on the Steam Workshop for an almost endless amount of new terrain to play on. After jumping into a given map, players will be plonked down on fresh terrain with a small number of small yellow people (bricktrons). In the Invasion game mode, it’s up to the players to command their bricktrons to build a settlement before the invasion timer reaches zero. Mainly, players will want to protect their starting crystal from damage, but they’ll also want to build stockpiles, defences, as well as other structures to give them an advantage over the marauding waves of enemies.

Each bricktron has a different role that allows them to fulfill different tasks. This means you’ll have to keep a close eye on who is who if you don’t want to quickly get caught out or frustrated when a bricktron won’t listen to your commands.

Build, Build, Build

In Castle Story, players build and upgrade their settlements through the gathering of resources. There are five basic natural resources to gather from the world around you: wood, stone, iron, brimstone and plant fiber. These basic materials can then be used in combinations to create more elaborate and more useful amenities. There’s several kinds of crafting tables such as the laboratory and altar, as well as structures like reinforced doors, bridges and even catapults.

The amount of materials and craftables on offer, the game can quickly devolve into a creative endeavour a la Minecraft. However, if players find they spend more time getting their stone archways just right, then they might prefer to play on the game’s sandbox mode, which allows players to freely create builds at their own pace without the threat of invading Corruptrons.

Crumbling Castle

Unfortunately, Castle Story isn’t totally without any faults. Since the game’s inception on Steam’s Early Access, the development hasn’t been totally smooth. In fact, the game suffered from an extended beta period in which many of the game’s basic features were either difficult to use, or completely missing from the game. Over the years, the developers over at Sauropod Studio have managed to change this, and the game is now a fully-fledged game worthy of its price tag. However, the game does suffer from a slow release of updates, which is disappointing considering the potential the game showed in the mid 2010s.

PROS

• Pleasant art style and general aesthetic
• Tons of replayability and bonus content
• Appears simple but has a level of complexity

CONS

• Difficult to learn at first
• Controls can be unintuitive
• Updates are rare