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CastleStorm
PC (Steam)
Birds and Ballistae
3.5/5 stars
“Castlestorm” is a multi-platform genre mashup by Hungarian Indie developer, Zen Studios. Released in 2013 on a variety of digital platforms, a year later, “Castlestorm” received a mobile Free2Play version on iOS and Android.
Presentation
“Castlestorm” has a lot of visual pop. The character designs are cartoony, stylized, and colorful (I especially love the female Viking Bear Riders with huge boobs), while the environments likewise evoke a great sense of the fantastical. The polygon engine used in the game is smooth and jaggie-free, plus the textures look great. I do wish the characters were a bit more animated during cutscenes – especially facial animation, which is painfully lacking.
Audio hearkens back to the days of the original “Warcraft,” where canned audio clips were used for a huge variety of things. Characters and troops each have a number of quips that they spout during battle, but these same quips get re-used instead of full voiceacting during cutscenes. The result is rather amusing. The soundtrack is likewise pleasant, but not terribly memorable or groundbreaking.
“Castlestorm” is free of bugs, glitches, and technical difficulties. It also has native Xinput controller support, making the entire product feel nice and polished.
Story
“Castlestorm” tells the story of two warring kingdoms, narrated during the opening and closing scenes entirely in rhyming meter. I’ll give the writers credit: “Castlestorm’s” poetics are much better (or perhaps less terrible) than the poetics of other recent games that have attempted the same use of rhyming, metered narration.
The two warring nations in question are the Soldiers and the Vikings. Long ago, their ancient and enduring conflict was brought to an end when the Goddess of Peace granted each kingdom one of her tears, in the form of a magical gemstone. The Soldiers, led by King Edgar, took custody of the Blue Teardrop Gem, while the Vikings took custody of the Red Teardrop Gem.
This peace lasted for a very long time, with the two rulers granted limited immortality to maintain the status quo. The events of the game proper begin when a new upstart Viking ruler, Chief Ramhorn, resumes the sacking and looting of his tribe with the goal of obtaining both Teardrop Gems and unlimited power.
Both factions have their own civil wars to deal with, as a band of rogue Soldiers is working to destabilize King Edgar’s rule from within, while a Viking resistance works to put a halt to Ramhorn’s aggressions. None of these story elements are handled with particular subtlety, but “Castlestorm” is more of a medieval fantasy cartoon than a ‘serious’ game, so all of the corny campiness works in the end.
“Castlestorm’s” story is divided into four chapters, with the latter two sold separately as DLC. The first chapter follows the adventures of Sir Gareth as he leads the Solder faction in retaliation to unprovoked Viking aggression. As the first chapter comes to an end, Gareth finds himself in Vikingland in alliance with the Viking resistance, led by the old Chief’s daughter, Freia. The vast majority of the second chapter follows Freia’s attempts to unite unhappy Vikings against Ramhorn’s aggressive policies, but ends with Sir Gareth battling a terrifying monster that kind of comes out of nowhere. The first DLC chapter follows the adventures of Sir Gareth’s son – who also kind of comes out of nowhere – Sir Gavin, as he tries to redeem his family name, which was besmirched by rumors that Sir Gareth’s disappearance at the end of the second chapter marked his betrayal and allegiance to Chief Ramhorn’s Vikings. The final chapter brings everything to a head, with the united Viking resistance backed by King Edgar’s army taking back control of Vikingland and returning peace to the world once again.
Between the base game and the DLCs, “Castlestorm” lasts around 15-20 hours, depending on how much the player wants/needs to grind. However, perfectionists can get a lot more hours out of the game by pursuing perfect scores on every mission.
Gameplay
“Castlestorm” is an extreme genre mashup with lots of little ideas taken from more popular (and often less interesting) games and combined into a single concept. The one vs. one castle building/destroying from the ancient Game Boy Advance launch title, “Fortress,” is mixed with the slingshot projectile mechanics of mobile phenomenon, “Angry Birds,” a dash of simplified Real-Time Strategy in the vein of “Swords & Soldiers” or “Clash of Clans,” and a garnish of hero-centric Beat ‘em Up.
“Castlestorm” is divided into a large number of individual missions in which one, several, or all of the previously mentioned gameplay mechanics come into play. Most missions involve all of the mechanics, allowing the player to build a castle from a number of pre-shaped blocks, populate said castle with rooms that provide access to specific troops and bonuses, then duke it out with an enemy castle across a 2D sidescrolling battlefield. Troops are summoned by spending Food, which auto generates over time. Troops simply march out of the castle gates and do their thing, allowing the player little to no control over them. Instead, the player’s attention is meant to be focused on manning the castle’s ballista, launching projectiles at both enemy troops and the enemy castle. Backing up the troops and ballista, the player can access a variety of magic spells, including the ability to summon and directly control a powerful hero to the battlefield.
Some missions limit the troops, ammunition, spells, heroes, etc. that the player has access to, but the majority are anything-goes battles with the aim of either capturing the enemy flag and returning it to the allied castle, or by simply knocking down the enemy castle by collapsing all of its rooms. Each mission rewards gold, which can be spent upgrading pretty much everything in the player’s arsenal. This need to acquire gold and upgrade the arsenal leads to the game’s primary fault: It is very, very grindy. Just playing through will generally generate enough gold to max-out two items in the arsenal at level 10. But with the ability to bring 5 projectiles, 5 troops, 5 spells, and 9 bonus rooms into the fray, getting enough gold to cap out takes a hellaciously long time and requires a lot of tediously replaying completed maps.
And tediously replaying maps is the lion’s share of “Castlestorm’s” replay value, as it uses the mobile game staple of applying a star rating to the player’s performance in each mission. Every mission has 5 possible stars to earn: Two from ballista accuracy (stay above 80%!), two from difficulty level (Normal or Hard), and one for fulfilling a special condition that is different in every mission. I didn’t bother snagging 5 stars in all missions. In fact, I only played one mission on Hard, hoping it would grant significantly more gold than Normal (it didn’t). In general, getting all the stars in “Castlestorm” is a fruitless activity best reserved for Trophy/Achievement Whores and OCD completionists.
Overall
“Castlestorm” is an entertaining little mashup of different casual game mechanics that is greater than the sum of its parts. If it didn’t take so much tedious grinding to earn gold for arsenal upgrades, I’d have given it another half a star.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 3.5/5
Gameplay: 3.5/5
Overall (not an average): 3.5/5
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