Retro-Pixel Castles: Game Review

An interesting game I got on Steam awhile back ago and still find my self occasionally interested in. Despite the generic name the designer is making a game not quite like most games that I would consider it similar to.

It is fairly simple in some ways, you basically command a group of settlers to work and build a settlement while also worrying about food, resources and eventual attacks from monsters such as zombies and skeletons.

But unlike most settlement games this one allows you to use your godly powers to scoop up settlers and/or resources and take them to another part of a much larger map. I find this makes the game more immersive as each settler provides you with power and the fruits of his work as well as gaining levels and think skill types are being added to the game.

So I could take my people from map to map building new homes and having new children and defending from enemies until the monsters became overwhelming and then scoop up as many of people as I could and head out to new land with my higher level settlers doing better each time.

The only snag I really hit was that eventually my settlement got too big for my computer to handle and everything slowed way down. However the designer is still hard at work improving the games features and performance. I recently spoke with him over steam and it seams he has plans to remove some of the load off the CPU to the GPU by something something particle physics. That sounds nice.

But no really this is a fun game and the designer seams capable and personable. It's currently 10 dollars on steam, I don't remember if I got it on sale or not but I have played it for 16 hours and could easily see me putting in another 16.

Also there isn't really castles just fun to build walls around your various settlement buildns. It would be more aptly described as Non-Retro Pixel Rouge-Lite Settlement Sim. just sayin.


Graphics: Can't comment as they were changed in the update right after I took a break from playing.

Sound: Seemed fine to me enjoyable catchy music and no issues.

Gameplay: Great, this what I'll will be going back for someday.

Performances: I'd say 4/5 stars here I have heard of mostly only minor issues other the cpu heavy performance which the designer is aware of and working on. (Early Access and all)

Over All Score: 16 hours of fun for 10 bucks or less easily and will likely put in another 16 or more. So although it may not be the next CK2 or Terraria for me it has lots of potential and I think it could teach some other designers about innovation and game play.

Final Decision: Buy it. Hell if you got the money don't even wait for a sale just go ahead and support the developer and maybe ask him to start plans on one day making a sequel.

Link to it's website.

Thought's on Blogging

When I first made this blog it was originally intended to be about role-playing games, mostly pen and paper games but also by extension video games and projects I was working on. However it's primary success (at least back in the day) seemed to be doing reviews. Ah, there was time when I spoke directly to other authors and game designers and they were happy to be featured on my blog. I largely stopped blogging when my gaming group split up and to this day I don't have strong group of people to game with.

However it wasn't my adventure logs and gaming ideas that spurred the most interest, although those are very fun to write about.

So I think I may attempt to get back into blogging but this time instead of being worried about D&D posts or the like I will go back to writing about what ever I feel like, perhaps with an emphasis on game reviews.

One of the best decisions I made was naming the blog after my username and not naming it after it's implied content. As such I can change the direction of the blog as much as I see fit, hopefully not too much though.

But first just to clarify my own thoughts I want to go over a few things. First, I admit I tend to jump from project to project sometimes to quickly and not always finishing what I intended. Second, I do sometimes get to caught up in wanting to make things perfect or focusing to much on success. But it is despite or because of those reasons that I am surprisingly happy with this blog. At this point it has survived many abandoned projects and waves of popularity and spans of emptiness, yet I still find myself coming back.

I don't think I could ever delete this blog or completely abandon it. Not without at least having a much better replacement. I am amazed having amassed the amount of posts and traffic that I did at the time whether it is seen as alot or alittle in the vastness of the internet, I am just happy to have contributed something.

So thank you to my readers and thank you to my fellow bloggers who showed an interest in working together and also thank you to the RPGBA who I just think are awesome to know is there especially in times when not much else is going on in my viewership.

One last thing, I'm not currently planning on sharing my short stories or fiction writing on this blog as I think I will begin making better use of my writing blog for that.