Great game, great concept.

But I've had the game nearly 2 years and there's nothing different. It feels like someone's hobby project.

I will give them credit, recently the patches have been cranking out. I will continue to play and test it out and hopefully change my review, but right now I can't recommend it.

Castle Story is a Voxel Based RTS Castle Building God game. This title is in Early Access.
Review may change as Game develops.


Gameplay

You take control of Bricktrons, your own little genderless plump buddies. These Bricktrons are your Builders, Miners, and Warriors. You have to tell your minions to do everything and they do it all at a snails pace. Which makes a gameplay session a long tedious chore to build your castle. Gameplay comes in three forms. Sandbox mode which is basically that. You pick an "Island" and begin to build without fear of attack. Survial gives you a constant mine and allows you to build a castle to defend it against enemies. Which are called "corruptrons" Multiplayer is Building with others mode. However to play multiplayer you have to create a seperate account and link it. Castle Story is definitely still in early access. 6/10

Graphics

Being a voxel based game this game is often compared with Minecraft. It is not. It is a Cartoony world with Beautiful round edges. The Bricktrons animations are great and when you see them all working in unison it is a sight to see. When Trees fall they fall in the world as well. The animations are really well done for these plump little men. There is however small clipping issues when looking at your bricktrons in armor. Also, when mining certain slopes. 6/10

Sound

The Ambience is pleasant amd soothing. You can hear the trees falling and the pickaxe hitting the dirt. The Bricktrons Approvingly greet you when jobs are started or finished. There is not much of a Soundtrack at this point but the menu music seems to fit the game. 6/10

Overall Opinion

Sauropod Studio could have a great title on their hands. As this is early access, things just arent fully ready yet, and that is to be expected when purchasing Early Access titles. This title at times felt fun and invigorating, but the tedium of micromanaging your Bricktrons every move counter acts that. The camera controls are a little strange at first but you

Overall I would say that "Castle Story" was enjoyable but still has some major flaws. 6/10

By Gein

I really wanted to belive in this game because of its cool concept, but let me tell you what has been going on in other indie games during the year that i owned this:

Kerbal Space Program went through enough updates to go into Beta.
Prison Archetect (smaller development team than Sauropod) had 10 major additions and 2 bug hunts.
Day Z (and in not a big fan of it) added cars along with a plethera of survivial features and bugs.
Subnautica was released and has added two diffrent veicals and is ready to add two more zones.
and those are just the ones i own.

In a 12 month period Castle story has basicly had one A.I. update and released their new "big map". Even with these updates the game is still bugged to the point of being unenjoyable I hope something happens but as it stands, this game is dead in the water and your mony is better spent on another title.

So once again here we have a studio not delivering on a promise to get a game out that people have bought and paid for. I purchased this game shortly after being offered on SEA roughly 18 months ago. To date the ONLY things done has been refactoring the code and a large map added. The AI is atrocious, the devs constantly delete threads or posts with any negative criticism and generally have an attitude of suppression. All we want to see is progression and to this point I dont believe the studio has enough experience to deliver what they promised. I am beginning to compare this game to GODUS as being a failure. So purchase at your own risk. if its finished it may be years down the road and not in a general time frame of 3 to 5 years for a game such as this. Remember over 2 years have already been invested in the game and it may take another 4 or 5 years at the rate its going if they last that long.

Here is a sample of them
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198079381919/moderatormessages/65143/

IF YOU ARE READING THIS, DO NOT BUY CASTLE STORY!!!

You guys (the devs) got $700,000 from a kickstarter in August of 2012 and mentioned twice in its description that you quit your jobs to work full time on Castle Story. What have you all been doing the past two and a half years? Not only should you not be charging $20 for an incomplete game that is more than fully funded, but you should be actually working on improving the game that you're charging $20 for. Maybe if it was one of those $2 or $3 games, I might recommend it. Your kickstarter says that FOUR PEOPLE paid over $2,000 to see this game leave the ground. Where has it gone? It's great that you've come out with 2 updates last month, but let's see some real bug fixes and some new content. I just wish I had that great of an idea to steal a million dollars and get away with it.

Here's their kickstarter page if you don't believe that they made over $700,000 on this "project":
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/902505202/castle-story

Castle Story has been in development for well over a year and in that time not a large amount of progress has been made. However with that being said I believe there is real promise with this game, all be it if it gets finished! There are some things which make it very unique and some which make it mainstream.

Pros:

- Unique Art Style
- Interesting style of gameplay
- Enjoyable for Short - Medium play times (1-3 Hours)
- Survival is very promising

Cons:

- Quite buggy in terms of the AI (AI often gets stuck with overloaded orders and enemy can often find pathing difficult)
- Variety of units is very limited (Melee Warrior/Archer/Builder:Unarmed)
- Limited Gamemodes
- Very basic Tutorial (Controls are very simple but was lack of proper tutorial, can be frustrating)
- Limited building options (2x2 Block | 1X1 Block | Arch Block | Wooden Pillar | Wooden Plank)
- Time period of development is worrying (Over a year and not a large amount of progress)
- Pricing (£15/$20) Is very constly for an almost Alpha/Beta

Overall the game is fun to play for a Short/Medium amount of time however given the number of issue's addressed above I would hold off buying it untill there is improvement or unless it is discounted down to around £4-8/$12. However because of these issues I would have to rate it probably a 4/5 out of 10!

Bought into early access in 2012 through the kickstarter..

2013 came and went without anything changing... started to lose hope..

2014 came and went with minimal changes... hope faded, I realised I had been robbed :/

2015 has arrived and I am about to leave home and travel the world, will probably never get to play this game lol..

It had potential.
It was a game full of potential, It could have been great and fun.

But unfortunately it's one of those Early Access Game leading to nowhere, it's borderline vaporware.
I usually expect devs to update their game every now and then, but when I reinstalled this game one year after my last play-trough I saw zero changes, nada, nichts, queue d'zob... and thus despite the several patch notes it seems to have.

So I don't recommend it because I think this game will NEVER leave it's early alpha stage...
It's a waste really, could have been great.

(I will gladly edit this review and give it a thumbs up if there's any significant progress in this game's development.)

Pretty average and my hours on record is lying cause i played in offline i probably got about 200 hour

**** DO NOT BUY, DEVELOPMENT IS SO SLOW THAT IS GOING BACKWARDS ****

I've bought this game beginning of 2014, since then i was already seeing of a lot of people saying the development was extremely slow, i waited for one entire year, and here is what i've got:

New Textures = New textures, oh my god, now the game is more beautiful but still buggy.
New Shaders = Another huge gigantic interstellar ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to make game look more 'cute'.
New Animations = Makes a couple of animations, games is almost the same ♥♥♥♥.
New AI System = True, new AI System with new bugs and not polished, fantastic job!
New Skybox = Sauropod receives complaints about game being buggy, makes a new skybox, LOL.
HDR Lighting = Another visual ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
Bigger Islands Up to one square KM = Game has issues with saving and bugs over the mechanics. makes the islands bigger!

Overall:

In one entire year, i saw 10% gameplay development and 90% visual, 1 year ago visuals and animations was pretty good, nobody would complain about the graphics, and instead of working on the mechanics and focusing on what is really important, throws new graphics in a new update, Sauropod, you are a joke.

0/10.

I would only recommend this game in later months or even years. Yes it is not complete so I tell you now that you should wait for a while like until 0.5 or something. Believe me this game has so much potential and so I just want to say wait and get it later. It is a fun game in the beginning but, later on it turns to a game you wait to have it updated.

It's alright basically.. The idea behind it is nice and you get wave of enemies so you have a reason to survive but.. The bricktons tend to just glitch and not move so you wait for them to die and be re-born via the crystal.. It gets a bit repetitive and for me once you've built to a certain level then it gets a bit pointless.. Like you can build this beautiful castle but you can't see inside buildings and that's really bad for if your bricktons start glitching or your attack reaches inside.. That's probably my preference of open plan coming to play but there's not much else to the game... I would definitely recommend buying it as a quick form of entertainment but it ends after an hour or so..

I don't know how it could be improved... Maybe more building progress after a catapult or enemy castles or well i jsut don't know but it's missing something to stop it becoming repetitive or a bland building game

This game has been in development for a few years and I played it heaps when I first found it (not on steam). And over the years it really has not changed much, its still clunkly and the game still does not have a working multiplayer (at the moment of this review).
I think this game is going in the right directon, but very slowly.
6/10
Its just over half so I recommend this game only if you really want to support the dev's.

I'm just going to make this short and simple:
Bought the game roughly a year ago. Expected problems. There were.
Came back a year later. Expected less problems, perhaps a fully functional game.
Disappointment.

Please, don't buy the game. Please.

I purchased this game atleast 1.5 years ago, and fair to say nothing has been changed.
I would not recommend this game due to it taking forever to develop.

fun at first but overtime the games minor updates/changes cause it to get old.
The map doesn't change the bricktrons keep locking up and world editor hasn't been available. instead of focusing on cosmetics elements their focus should be on the charectors locking up.

I LOVE this game its just soo fun, yea its has its times when its bugs out but its still a great game and i LOVE it.

I honestly think that this is the worst game I have ever played. Just listing the flaws would take several pages.
But here are some:
- Worst interface ever. The interface is SO bad that it kinda remind of old Dos games. It is like the designers have never played a game in their life. For example, it takes 6 clicks to load a game.
- Nonexistent AI. Workers will cross your city to pick up a material, while there was the same material right where he was.
- Workers freeze regularly. It often takes up to 12 seconds for a worker to start executing an order.
- I think it's the first time I turn my speakers off in a game. Not only is the music and FX bad, but the Options don't work (as most of the things in the game) so even set at 0% the music still plays.
- Graphics are bad.
- TONS of bugs.

However, the worst thing is that the game has absolutely nothing good or slightly original to it. It's basically Warcraft I horribly executed by a talentless team.

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.