Castle Warriors, GameResort’s new real-time strategy game, is now available in the app store. Playing like a 3D version of Galcon set in feudal times, you’re tasked with conquering all castles and vanquishing the hordes of orcs and other baddies that have invaded your land and threaten your Queen.
Castle Warriors offers a quick visual tutorial to explain the basics of gameplay before throwing you headlong into the action. Simply put, orcs, goblins, demons, and other evildoers have broken the truce with your kingdom, attempting to pillage and plunder your kingdom after the death of the King. You must lead your armies of warriors, warlords, heroes and more to fend off this unwelcome intrusion, fighting by day and reinforcing by night. That’s right, day and night cycles play a major factor in the game, too, requiring extra levels of strategy to effectively defend your land.
The single-player campaign mode offers 12 battlefields with 3 difficulty levels (Easy, Normal, and Hard). Each battlefield contains several castles spaced out among other geographical features that can provide either additional protection or doom your armies to defeat. Castles contain blue flags if they are controlled by your armies, red flags if they are controlled by your enemies, or no flag if they have yet to be taken over by either side. The number on each flag indicates the number of warriors or orcs contained within that castle. Each side’s main castle is located on extreme opposite ends of the battlefield and contains all starting individuals. It is also this castle that will acquire reinforcements that must then be dispersed to other castles for purposes of battle.
Before each level begins, you are given a certain number of days within which you must defeat the enemies. At the start of each day, a little sunshine marker moves across the top of the screen from Dawn to Dusk. A nice touch is that the sky changes in accordance with the time as the day progresses. Once it reaches Dusk, any armies in transit or fighting return immediately to the nearest friendly castle, the day’s statistics are totaled, and reinforcements are awarded. If there are enough troops in a castle, the castle will be upgraded. In the morning, you start from where you left off, though each side gets a number of reinforcements sent to their main castle. Some castles themselves may also receive upgrades that increase the ability of the castle dwellers to repel attacks. We found that some days were best spent simply moving large amounts of armies into position closer to the enemy castles, as long treks from faraway castles often waste precious time.
Graphically, the game is quite appealing. The graphics are very clean and the interface provides tons of info without adding clutter. There is a mini-map on the left side of the screen which indicates where all castles are and who controls each. When attacks occur, info panes pop up on the bottom of the screen. Tapping on the pane takes you to the castle being attacked so that you can quickly deploy defenses. Controls are tap and swipe-based. The battleground is reminiscent of games like Star Defense or Volcano Planet, where your view is sort of a close up of the land that still employs the curvature of the planet. Swiping on the land rotates your view toward or away from your swipe. Tapping on a castle selects the castle and brings up info panes in the bottom right corner which give you the option to change how many troops will be moved, either some, half, most, or all simply by tapping on a button. When you have made your selection, tap on a castle to reinforce or attack. You will see a group of individuals moving across the land. If they encounter enemies along the way, they will battle where they meet. If they reach a castle that is currently under attack, they will attack the enemies and any remaining warriors will reinforce the castle after the battle. Initially, it appeared that the game would be pretty easy, but the iDevice puts up a surprising challenge. It typically took until the last of the allotted days to defeat the enemies. Once or twice, I would have all but a couple of enemies vanquished when dusk would hit, allowing them to press on another day with reinforcements. Castle Warriors autosaves your progress at the recap screen, so exiting in the midst of a battle will lose only the progress from that battle. The game is pretty addicting and highly enjoyable.
The soundtrack is pretty cool, as well as all of the battle sound effects. The main theme is sort of a feudal version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, but it’s catchy. Castle Warriors takes the Galcon formula and adds some excitement and humor to the genre. Replayability is adequate, as you never face the same battle twice. The geography and time frame create some new obstacles that really impact the game each time you play. Though it may eventually get a bit repetitive, we see this as the type of game that will hold our interest for some time. GameResort launched Castle Warriors at a special price of $0.99, though the price will be going up soon. We wholeheartedly recommend this 4-Dimple battle of epic proportions to anyone with an interest in the RTS genre.
Castle Warriors gets our AppSmile 4-Dimple rating:
