Pax Prime 2015 Day 3 Recap

Sauropod Studio – Castle Story

CastleStory is a simple cute little voxel world builder with a twist. That twist is rather than being the avatar yourself, you are now the overseer ala RTS base building mechanics. This has been a cool feature in the survival mode offered since the game became playable following one of the earliest Kickstarter gaming successes on record. But very soon this is going to become fantastic as Sauropod Studio is set to release the beta of the multiplayer edition!

The concept is so straight forward and yet so unlike anything before it. Your little builder Brickton minions can be sent out to mines or other nodes to harvest materials back to your core structure. From there, you have all the freedom you would expect from any voxel sandbox game to use those materials to construct forts, archer towers, or any other defensive structure you find useful. Or you can use the materials to craft tools to open up new possibilities in both what materials you can farm, as well as the types of units you can build. Just note that while assigning construction of projects is just as simple as other voxel games, you need to assign a Brickton to make your vision a reality. Which means the more you’re building, the less you’re farming, adding the first level of strategic RTS elements to the game.

Eventually you will unlock basic swordsman and archers to kill approaching foes. The foes in the demo were ironically made of stone, which meant killing them not only netted you new souls to add to your central command crystal for upping your max Brickton limit, but their bodies could serve as more sturdy material to defend against future attacks.

In an attempt to make combat more strategic than the typical RTS numbers smash together, but without making it overly complex with an endless series of skills to micromanage, Castle Story mixes realistic physics with friendly fire and smaller army sizes to create a one of a kind experience. While soldiers can hold their own against regular foes, archers are required to bring down the big bad golems. Archers can typically kite the larger foes without issue, but when you have a rush of smaller baddies with one or two big bad golems in the midst, things get tricky. You’re forced to utilize hard to access higher terrain, such as your fortress’ castle walls, to put your archers in safe vantage points to open fire. Meanwhile your swordsmen must keep the smaller units busy with them instead of breaking into your fortress. Should you get your wires crossed, you might end up having your archers shoot one of your warriors in the back, killing your own units in the process. It’s rather chaotic for small scale RTS, and a whole lot of fun to watch unfold.

I questioned their team about tech trees or future units, but they said their goal was to keep gameplay simple. Rather than introduce a massive variety of units, they’d prefer to just offer various routes you can develop the concept of ranged and melee characters to give you bonuses for acquiring the rare materials, without forcing a major learning curve on you to figure out how best to use so many unit types.

While the single player survival mode is a great test of game concepts, I feel its the competitive elements here that is going to make Castle Story shine. We can’t wait to get our hands on the first trials later this month.

That’s it for my Day 3 coverage, but there’s plenty more to see. Tossing things over to Ragachak now to round out his experience!

Continue on to Master of Orion!