Hey all! It’s been a while. We’ve spent several months honing the game based on feedback from players at MAGFest and Steam NextFest (along with adding a lot of new content!) and are thrilled to finally share it with you!
So, first, here are the highlights. In terms of new content we’ve:
Added Paladins and Scouts - our first mounted units! - completing the human faction roster and adding new mechanics including healing and knockback
Added three new base tiers, creating a vertical progression system linked to gold income, unit availability, and upgrade capacity
Added buildable improvements to customize high-tier outposts
Created a variety of enemy AI personalities to add more variety to gameplay.
We’ll go into each of these additions in more detail below. We’ve also taken time to overhaul the game mechanics to make pacing feel more engaging, combat less stale, and more options for economic progression. The UI has been improved to better communicate game mechanics to the player based on feedback we’ve had from our playtesters.
New Units
Perhaps the most exciting addition to the game is our two new units - The Paladin and Scout! These are our first mounted units, and as you may expect, they take very high damage from Spearmen.
The Paladin is a frontline healing-tank. They add survivability to your formation while delivering a powerful melee blow. Paladins are among the most expensive units in the game and require base tier 3 to unlock. They are heavily armored but can be countered by Spearmen and Crossbows.
The Scout is a fast wolf unit unlocked at base tier 2. They are able to quickly rush to the frontline, supporting a formation on the edge of buckling or capturing outposts before the enemy can arrive. Their health pool is modest and can be quickly destroyed by Spearmen.
Combat Improvements
One of our biggest challenges in designing Castles of War is delivering big, epic, real-time strategy battles in a 2D side-scrolling environment. This poses a lot of limitations not found in 3D and top-down games - units obscure each other when standing still and flanking enemy lines is not an option. We anticipate this being a challenge with many stages of revision all throughout our development cycle, but we’ve delivered a few changes that help make combat more engaging.
The first of these is knockback. Previously, unit lines held fast - melee units stacked on melee, ranged on ranged, and combat continued in a single place until one side overpowered the other. With knockback, this line moves forwards and backwards - in true tug of war fashion - while units scramble to re-assemble themselves in formation. Light units are knocked back further than heavy units, and catapults and mages knock units really far back. Oh, and did we mention they get launched in the air too?
We’ve made some visual changes to help see how many units are in motion. Units are more spread out while marching, then form more tightly when battle is joined.
We’ve expanded our counter system further with magic armor and anti-cavalry. Armor and armor-piercing mechanics already existed - giving crossbows an upper-hand against knights and paladins - and we now have a similar system for magic units. As mentioned previously, spearmen do extra damage to mounted units, as one would expect them to.
Progression Improvements
We’ve added several new features to increase vertical progression and create a more exciting game loop. The first of these is the introduction of base tiers. Similar to outposts, there are now four tiers of bases. Upgrading your base increases your gold income, unlocks more units, and increases the time required to capture the base. The base tier also determines the maximum upgrade tier for outposts - and by extension walls - so upgrading your base is fundamental to maintaining control over the economy. We will be refining and expanding the role of base tiers in future updates.
There has been a lot of interest in our community for more base building, and we are happy to deliver on that with the addition of buildable improvements! Tier 3 and Tier 4 outposts now have construction plots. These allow you to build markets, which earn extra gold, and barracks, which allow you to train one unit of your choice closer to the frontline. More building options will be added in the future.
We’ve also added our first special outpost - the windmill. This outpost produces a lot of gold but cannot be upgraded and is difficult to defend. Some outposts now have treasure chests which award gold to the first team to capture them.
Other Things
We’ve made too many changes in this update to discuss everything in detail here - some you’ll have to find for yourself! - but we have two more things we’d like to mention.
The first is a drastic UI overhaul. We’ve shrunk the HUD, added a cozy animation to the main menu, and expanded panels to contain much more detailed information about units, outposts, and improvements. Questions about stats, counters, and more are no longer a mystery - click an object in-game to learn more about how it works!
Next, we’ve added personality types to the enemy AI which vary level-to-level. This was something we had in Trenches of War and are happy to bring it here. In some levels the enemy will spam cheap units and rush to capture as many outposts as they can, in others they’ll focus on expensive elite units. Prioritization of training vs. building upgrades varies across personalities, as does the frequency of attacks. This keeps gameplay fresh and less predictable across the campaign.
Thank you so much for sticking with us. We’ve been quiet for a while, but I hope you think this huge update is worth the silence. We have some really exciting things in the works that aren’t quite ready to share yet, including our next biome and - most exciting - our next faction. There is a classic charm to the Highland Humans, but we are about to leave the safety of the mountains for something grittier, murkier, and a little more… fantastic.
Please share your thoughts with us - we can’t wait to hear them!