I bought this game about 18 months ago.
It was a great concept, and a really fun game to play with knowing that much more content was promised and on the way.
I was dissapointed to find out shortly after obtaining the game that they were essentially suspending any new features pending a 'refactoring' in the Unity game engine. The good news was that once this was done, they were to start pumping out feature and content updates much more quickly, since they were including an improved asset pipeline.
That took much more time than their community liason had let on. The community (other investors in the game) were getting pretty restless.
Finally that refactoring was completed. A patch was released! Unfortunately, it had little to no impact on the gameplay. There were some minor stability improvements but no real new features or content. We were okay with that because of the promise of much more coming more quickly...
We were then informed that we were being too impatient, and that no new features or content could be done until they finished working on their internal tools (factories).
We were then informed that there would continue to be a suspension of any new features or content while they rewrite the AI engine and the Pathfinding. No new content could be provided since "Why would we give you new content if the AI cant figure out what to do with that content"...
Of course most users abandoned hope that this would ever be completed. It had been month after month after month of broken promises. They eventually ended their relationship with the community liason, citing that he never really spoke for the company, and his promises were unfounded.
Now, FINALLY.. version 0.3 has been released!! (coincidentally timed with a Steam promotion) With the new AI, the new Pathfinding, new lighting effects, a bigger island to work with.
Unfortunately, there is still no new content, no new features. Leading up to a sale on Steam, they put together a nice little video of the new features .. New AI (Which is worse than the original).. New Lighting (Which is of zero impact on the gameplay).. a bigger island (which is probably among the bottom 2% of necessary changes)..
They then 'cleaned' out the user forums of most negative feedback..
Unfortunately even after these years of waiting, the new 'version' was even more buggy and had less (YES LESS) features than the original. The great new AI that was promised could only be 'tested' in a seperate environment, where the feature set was limited, and even that was far worse than the original, very buggy, AI.
They started releasing (Very minor) bug fixes almost daily, appeasing many, even though they really only addressed things like difficulty in loading the game, or glitchy graphic artifacts, etc .. These fixes and patches (0.3.1, 0.3.2, 0.3.3, 0.3.4) started giving some of us the impression that this past couple of years of unfulfilled and broken promises was at an end and the momentum would finally change. Unfortunately, although those changes were welcome if only to see that there was actually some level of activity going on.. They were short lived. 4 patches in 5 days. Then nothing.. again.
This game has great potential as a concept. But if you are considering it.. You would be very well advised to wait until you can read the reviews of the finished game.

I've been excited about this game for a long while. The concept was creative and nostalgic so I decided to support the game's early development. As all the other reviewers have indicated, there has been almost no significant progress in gameplay in a year and a half. To add insult to injury, the devs at Sauropod act as if the "early access" disclaimer forfeits any right by the gamers supporting them, to expect progress or a timetable for completion. Indeed, the devs censor and berate the gamers which have supported them financially, who are rightfully frustrated by the glacial rate of progress. Are we supposed to maintain our excitement and support when we get superficial/cosmetic updates every few months?

The devs frequently complain that the increasingly negative reviews are hindering sales, and therefore development. That's right Sauropod, blame your supporters for your own incompetence. DO NOT SPEND MONEY ON THIS GAME, at least until a complete version is released.

The block system is terrible, and also the ai. Like the concept though.

2.7/10

Wouldn't pay for this, unless they made the mechanics actually work, its been a year so i dont see any hope for it.

This game has great potential. You command around minions rejected from Despicable Me. You order them to collect various resources and build a grand castle of your own design, then defend against monsters during the night.

However, in it's current state, Castle Story isn't very functional. It offers a hardly playable tutorial that teaches very basic things. It doesn't teach you how to summon new minions, something you obviously need to know how to do. The A.I have very poor pathfinding and often get stuck.

Look for this when it is fully released. Until then, avoid.

I funded this game on kickstarter. As i see it the game hasnt gone far at all towards reaching a playable state. I gave them my money years ago and I've given up on seeing a return from it. Dont make the same mistake I did.

Love the idea of this game.. but it's a game you install every 6-8 months to see how much has changed, to see that the answer is "Not too much."

My hopes are still high, and with luck someday we'll be playing something one might consider a release candidate.

Can't recommend it right now, but I look forward to the day that I can.

That said, there is certainly fun to be had, you just have to work a bit harder for it. This is still early access after all.

I had high hopes for the game when I bought it a year ago. It's sad to come back to it after a year and see basically no real progress.

The game was so poorly optomized, I was experiencing series frame rate issues when my computer runs games like titanfall at 60+fps.

The interface was frustratingly unintuitive and poorly explained. Nothing was easy to do as it should be.

Developement is suspiciously slow.

Prime example of why you can't trust early access anymore.

First kickstarter and the last one

My brother bought it for me when it was on kickstarter.

We were really trying to get into the game, and we envisioned the possibility of building giant structures like the pictures above suggests. Building mega as in minecraft, but doing it faster with many-a-workers.

As people in the review are pointing out, the controls are not intuitive, and many small aspects like deleting an item or deleting a task, seem like a hassle.
I am a miner, I need places for my stuff, but when digging out a 7x10x8 hole, the biggest part of my base will most likely be storage, which takes up more space than you can actually fortify.

My Brother and I are only waiting for an update, expansion or a fix for broken promises and our broken dreams.

The trailer was good, but half the things in the trailer aren't actually in game. Updates are slow and just fix a few bugs. The AI is buggy. Multiplayer is tedious to set up. I do not think this game is worth $20.

I would rate this game 1/10. I do not recommend buying this. It's not worth it's current price.

It's a great concept, really! But the developers seem to be incapable of getting the game running properly. Been following its development for years now, and while I'm aware I purchased an Early Access game, it's at the point now where I don't see this game ever being finished. It has the same bugs and lack of content it did a year ago, the units don't respond well (or sometimes not at all) to commands, there's still no solid multiplayer, and the game still lags tremendously after a certain amount of waves.. This game isn't going anywhere, sadly. Unplayable.

I strongly urge you not to buy this game.

this game ian't dead yet. they just released a bunch of patch. its not dead it's just in development hell

I don't know why everybody is arguing about the few updates that have come along in the past - Sauropod Studios is no Ubisof with 5000 employees that can make an update in a day.
The game is awesome, Sauropod is still working on it and I'm enjoying it, even though there aren't that much updates.

Very frustrated with the Developer's "more content coming soon" ♥♥♥♥♥♥*t. Concept is great, gameplay is fun, but it's pretty limited in it's content right now. And it's looking like there isn't more to come anytime soon.

My advice, you'd be wasting your time waiting on this title. When, or if, more content does come out for it, I'd actually consider a positive reccomendation for this game.

+Gameplay
+Concept
--- Developers

Even thought it's really basic, and early access, it's still really good fun to play. Looking forward to the updated Linux version, and all the new features planned.

21DEC14 Update below.

Overall, I do enjoy this game, and probably had more anticipation for this than any other early access I've followed. So why do I not recommend this? Bullets:

Cons:
- No updates! Years have passed and the game is still in a less functional state than their fictional tech demo.
- Current state is playable, but quickly reveals how broken it is. Terrible AI, limited functoinality of game mechanics, limited... game.
- Devs hate the community. Well probably not hate, but this is the crux of it. There appears to be absolutely no effort being made to update the game in an actual and meaningful way. When pressed for answers from the community as to when we can expect something new, the same canned response of 'we don't give deadlines' is the answer. That's fine after a few months, but not after a few years. The first major red light for me when nearly a years worth of dev updates were about how they spent a month and a half working on a new sound effect for an object that isn't even in the game, or here's a new soundtrack I've been listening to, or "Hey, we're going on vacation!". While glaring issues remain untouched and unaddressed. PR people are hired to quell criticism and silence community dissent.
-Devs are in over their heads. A lot of people will call them theives, or scammers, I don't see it as that. They are still around. They are still 'working'. But it really seems like they've all retreated to their little comfort zones, and feverishly work on silly little things like a sound effect to the exclusion of actual game problems. Why would they do this? Well, it seems pretty clear that they have realized they cannot handle those bigger problems, and just seem to be hoping they'll fix themselves tomorrow. Their production efforts are terribly misguided, and no one seems able to get the train back on the tracks. This is the main reason I think the community has given up on them. There are gracious ways out of this connundrum for them, but they seem completely unwilling to compromise, admit their shortcomings, and work with the community. For that they have failed utterly at making a game. A community college degree does not a game dev make.

Pros:
- Build a big castle block by block, watch a nearly good physics engine crush it.
- If you give them enough money to keep the lights on, you get a t-shirt or something, someday.


Update 21DEC14:
I figured I would update the review considering how much activity the dev's have had lately. But it seems it was all just lip service. Over the last few weeks they've been shotgunning loads of update announcements, but the reality of the situation is those were all just announcements for one single update. That update itself was absolutely trivial, and seems to have added nothing of substance to the game. The devs constantly give the excuse of "reworking" and "redeveloping" engine components of the game, but these changes never seem to result in any sort of actual impact to the game. For all their bluster, a disapointingly little amount has changed, and all assumptions about them have been confirmed. This is just shameless PR propaganda.

The sad fact is, if you're the lunk head that invented a square wheel, taking a year off to invent an octagonal wheel leaves you as still a lunk head. I don't think I'll be revisiting this game until it's final release, whenever that may be.

Final thoughts for now: Stay away. With luck they'll go bankrupt and sell all IP to a competant developer.

I foolishly paid money for this game when it first came out on steam, in the two years since then they have done nothing of note to the actual game. They've been to PAX east, they've ordered in Castle Story T-shirts and Castle Story plushies, they've hired bearded men to make videos of people looking busy, they've deleted my posts on their youtube videos and they've deleted my posts on the community hub and banned me from posting there again, they've got new gaming rigs, they've painted the walls of their office with a cool Castle Story mural, they've been out in the woods making noises, they've played Magicite, once again what they HAVEN'T done is anything of note to the game itself.

The game in its current state is "OK" for a buggy unfinished alpha, not much content to speak of, certainly not worth £14.99. These developers sold everyone a pack of lies and hired people to censor out anyone that calls them out on their unethical, thieving and unprofessional behaviour. I can think of many games that have far more content and regular updates and better developers (in terms of listening to and communicating with the community) that cost far less. An example of their lying can be found in the trailer, you are led to believe that there are two types of enemies, it shows a larger corruptron throwing rocks at the castle. This is an outright lie, there is no such thing in the game. The only other game I can think of recently with this kind of unethical misrepresentation of the product is War Z with its crawling zombies in the trailer.

The future for Castle Story is bleak, most people who were going to buy it have already bought it long ago when it first came to steam, since then the developers have completely failed to deliver. Any criticism of their unprofessional behaviour by the community is ignored or censored. They have all the money they're going to get so there is simply no more reason to work on the game any further. Instead they are hiring more and more staff to sell it to people on the internet and make promises that will never be kept to create the illusion that they are still working on the game.

I expect that in time they will change the name of the game as War Z did to squeeze out those last few sales before it is consigned to the dustbin of history as yet another kickstarter project that made the devs very rich but utterly failed to deliver on its promises.

Do not give these unethical, thieving and unprofessional developers any of your money, to do so would encourage others to follow their lead.

DO NOT BUY! Sauropod studios are run by a very small group of inexperienced, unapologetic jerks. If you bought in to this game through kickstarter or early access, they will treat you like crap on the forums.

The only thing Castle Story had going for it was the amazing work the Community Manager: Box, was doing. Box would try to give information to you straight, without breaking any of the company rules, which was very difficult to do. Box would always try to break information down to the community and calm people down who were angry about any of the situations. In the end, the company would give Box misleading information and then blame him for giving out any information to the community.

One of the primary developers for Castle Story is a dev named Thierry. Thierry has a tendency to berate the community for asking questions. On multiple occasions I've read post by him calling out individuals and virtually yelling at them, or the community in general and blaming them for being impatient. The game has been in development for years now, and there has literally been no visual improvement in over a year.

Originally there were weekly updates on what was going on, with an occasional skipping of a week or two. Now there are monthly updates on what is going on. I take that back. There are monthly video blogs about things nobody cares about. These "monthly" video blogs have only made it up to the 3rd blog before they seem to have stopped posting them. It has been six weeks since the last video blog, which is probably a good thing, because they're useless information anyway.

TL;DR, STAY AWAY FROM THIS GAME. The devs will treat you like crap, and blame the community for asking too many questions, the game has been stagnant for over a year. The forums have started seeing posts deleted, and users are getting banned for giving out useful information, and asking real questions respectfully.

STAY AWAY FROM THIS GAME, i cant warn people enough, just dont even BOTHER thinking about buying this game, it will be a waste of your money, the game looks fun in all the stuff they promised. but its nothing more than a load of lies. there are NO updates. the game has had no content update since 2012. the devs dont even want to answer questions related to content updates. they are just there to milk you dry. please upvote this review so people wont make the mistake like i did. i sincerely beg you not to support this team of "devs"