“Right there? Don’t you think that wall is thick enough?”
The architect shook his head. “No. We need at least one more layer.”
“What for?” the assistant asked, confused. “No enemy soldier will get up there anyway. What are we so afraid of?”
“That wall leads to His Highness’ quarters.” the architect explained. “The king likes to wander when he’s bored, and we don’t want him accidentally finding himself in danger.”
“But the wall is already three layers thick. There is no way he could-…“
“Trust me.” The architect put a hand on his assistant’s shoulder, shaking his head. “We don’t want to take any chances.”
Castle Builders
Developed by Rebel Twins, Castle Master TD is a mix of the tower defense genre and Tetris. Pieces of a castle fall from the sky—walls, weapons and even soldiers. Use them to expand your castle and protect your king, earn gold to upgrade your pieces or get more of them, and ensure your kingdom gets to live another stage. Just make sure the royal treasury doesn’t go empty…
Medieval Jam
When I say Castle Master TD looks and sounds good, I mean it in the most “mobile phone game” way possible. If you’ve played any such games in your life, you’ve seen this style. Very casual-friendly and safe, and for the most part, doesn’t stand out in any meaningful way. The art style is very round and colorful, with characters being puppeteered around without much variation in form or expression. The soundtrack always evokes the right feeling for the situation, be it aggressive drums during combat or something more mellow while exploring menus, but it doesn’t go out of its way to be memorable.
Keep A King Safe
In Castle Master TD, your goal is to protect your king. Build a castle from falling pieces, fortify it with walls and defenders, then watch as your soldiers fight back the invading armies. Each stage provides you with a set of predetermined pieces. Winning on a stage gives you gold depending on how well you performed, and you can spend this gold to upgrade castle pieces to be stronger or buy more pieces to use on a particular stage. Buying pieces only applies to the next stage, though—after that, it’s gone and you have to rebuy a new one.
Once you start a stage, you’re presented with a default layout to build upon. The moment you place your first defender, the invasion begins, and so does the frantic scramble to replace lost walls and soldiers with new ones that take forever to arrive. At first, your castle pieces are fragile and upgrading them quickly becomes expensive. Aside from the gold you earn from victories, you can also collect a royal tax every two hours. Due to the slow progression, this will be your primary way to upgrade pieces after the early game.
My Kingdom For A Horse
The snail’s pace progression doesn’t have to be a problem as long as the game is fun. In some regards, it is. There are two big problems, though. The first one is actually the progression, despite what I just said. Enemies scale up so fast that within just a few stages, they’ll destroy your walls in a single attack, making whatever defense you can muster up inconsequential unless you cheese the game with weird strategies that were clearly not intended.
The other problem, which I found even more annoying, is the artificial intelligence. Your free-roam soldiers and even your king act mostly autonomously. The soldiers wander around looking for enemies to fight, and they sometimes even attack them once they clash. I did have times when my swordsman was faced against a group of archers and was entirely content with just waving his sword at them from a distance while he was shot down.
The king isn’t much better. I would be completely fine with him if he just stood still so I could protect him, but he tends to wander. If nothing stops him, he can easily walk right into the enemy soldiers, making it difficult not to lose on the spot.
Castle Master TD can be a fun game if you ignore its shortcomings. The slow progression, the annoying AI, the janky placement of pieces… There is a fun castle-building tower defense game under all that. If you’re willing to look past or endure those faults, this game could keep you busy for quite a while with its many levels, stages and castle piece variation. If not, you can still give it a try, but you’ll probably move on soon enough.
