Age of Castles Review

When I first heard about Age of Castles, I imagined an action packed strategy game. Maybe my thoughts had been slightly far fetched, or maybe I had been misled. Whatever the case, the game actually turned out to be far from what I had imagined.

Although an incredibly simple concept, the gameplay in Age Of Castles is fairly hard to summarise. Players don't take the role of God in the way that they do in management games, even though this is the initial thought that I had on the game. Age Of Castles is in fact, put simply, a decision making game built up from random events.

The game is separated into days. When you start on your first day you give jobs to the people in your kingdom. Across the top of the screen there are several icons with numbers next to them. These tell you how much gold you have, how much building material you have for your castle, how many people there are in your town, how much magic you have, plus the amount of attack and defence in your force.

On some days, you will get more than a couple of messages on your screen. Instead, you will take part in a battle for the day. Whilst there was hope for a little more action here, I soon realised this was not going to happen. The battle screen loads up and informs you that it is a battle of your name vs. random name will be interesting to see how the game develops go from here. I'm not sure whether Anarchy will choose to build on the basic graphics that are currently in the game, or just choose to keep things simple. Either way, Age Of Castles is not a major title, but should be a light-hearted break from the action of other strategy games on the market. There is a variety of enemies, including giant bats, orcs and gremlins. Having said this, it really doesn't matter who your enemy is because all you see is a cartoon picture to represent it.

You will not get access to most of these items until you are well in to the game, since many have high requirements. The Lucky Clover for example will give you "luck beyond belief", bringing you 10% more gold daily. However, you need at least 500 people in your town and at least 100 in magic.

Although very simple in appearance, Age Of Castles is presented nicely. It has a very cartoonish feel, with very colourful buttons and icons on the main menu. The only proper moving in-game graphics are those on the backdrop. For example, in the first level set in the town, you can see various units working around a castle structure. The image is not interactive, and simply provides a basic backdrop to the game to give you a feel or where it's set. Personally, I would have liked to see my castle grow or watch the world change as I made new, radical decisions.

Age Of Castles is a good concept, and one that has been implemented very simply. Thanks to the wide variety of random events, the game can provide fun for any casual gamer. There is definitely enough variety to keep players interested. As you progress through the game, you will move from the town to new locations such as The Ruins, The Swamp, Skull Island, and finishing in The Underworld Volcano. These new locations offer a new backdrop and new random events. My doubt is whether there is enough going on in the game to keep people interested for a long time. Since the only main decisions that the player gets to make are what roles each of the people play in the town, and which spells to buy, the constant clicking of new day and end day could get a little too repetitive.

It will be interesting to see how the game develops go from here. I'm not sure whether Anarchy will choose to build on the basic graphics that are currently in the game, or just choose to keep things simple. Either way, Age Of Castles is not a major title, but should be a light-hearted break from the action of other strategy games on the market.