Retro-Pixel Castles, A Hybrid Godlike Village Simulator Thoughts & Key Giveaway

I’ve been keeping an eye on Retro-Pixel Castles for a while, and I decided to let it mature a bit. I’ve now given it some thoughts, and I have some keys to throw your way.

Yes, that’s our third giveaway in a very short time, I'm good to you aren't I.

Full disclosure: Keys provided by the awesome developer.

About the game
Retro-Pixel Castles is at heart a village simulator. But, where most village simulators focus mostly on balancing your village, Retro-Pixel Castles also throws in a blend of Godlike, Tower Defense and other survival elements into the mix in an attempt to create a roguelike village simulator. In RPC you will lose, the world will become increasingly harsh until you inevitably are slaughtered by it. The goal isn't to win, that's not possible, the goal is to see how long you can survive!

Some initial thoughts
While the tutorial button sadly did nothing, the game isn’t exactly hard to figure out. I’m not saying it’s a simple game, but it has a decent interface which goes a long way. You can find the basic guide here for reference.

I’m actually finding the game to be quite enjoyable, even this early on. This is surprising as I usually get bored by these types of games quickly. I think it’s amplified again by just how accessible the game is, so it's not as frustrating to get into like Gnomoria.

You can click on each individual worker, and see their energy level, hunger level, health etc. It’s all laid out nicely, and makes playing it a pleasure. You can even see what they are currently up to, like gathering resources.

It’s not your usual city builder though, that’s for sure. It’s aimed at killing you, and the first night brought on lots of zombies, but luckily no one died.

It feels a bit like Settlers had a baby with a Tower Defence game, and I'm quite liking it. It’s made a pixel-style survival city-builder, and that's the best way I can describe it.

Getting your starting build order is quite important, and my first night seemed to go reasonably well as I laid out the plans for my city. Things did not go as well after my second night, as I decided to start the game by focusing on defences, and not housing or food for my people (woops). They began to drop in the street for a nap, and they started to die from a rather large zombie invasion. It probably didn’t help that I hadn’t built a farm, so they were all pretty hungry.

By the third night I think I had my town setup like a well oiled machine, and it was looking good. Minus the blood from all the zombie killings, we really need a janitor.

I played a good half an hour before I even thought about writing this up, so that’s something.

Issues
One thing I would like to see is a priority toggle, so if I place a bunch of buildings and want one built first, I want to be able to set it as a priority. Having that would have solved a lot of my issues.

The game also decided to quit to the desktop once during my first 48 minute session, which isn’t bad for an early game, but still annoying. Luckily the game does autosave, so I didn’t actually lose much more than five minutes gameplay. I sent the developer my logs, and they confirmed it’s a very rare crash that’s already been fixed, good news!

Final thoughts: It’s great, but the visual style won’t be for everyone. Give it a bit of time, and you will look past the visual style like I did. It's another time-sink here folks to mellow out with, and I'm very much enjoying it.

How to win a key
Share a link to our homepage on your favourite social network, screenshot it, and post it here to enter.

Winners will be picked on the 31st of July.

You can find Retro-Pixel Castles on Steam here. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.