5punk

Do we have a Castle Story thread? I'm sure I've seen it somewhere here before. Anyway, for those who don't know it's sort of Populous meets Minecraft; you have a population of little yellow guys who you indirectly coax into mining blocks and creating a castle with the objective of surviving the various grobblies who will lay siege to it, all along a chain of floating islands. It looks great, and there's a video here:

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMCWVvuza_s[/media]

The Kickstarter for it is nearly over, and I think they've well cleared their target. I backed it on thursday and today got an update email saying every backer gets a bonus prize because of how much they love us. They explain in this very funny video:

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSH_s7Xh5Ok[/media]

oh fudge! i meant to kickstart this last night but forgot

guess ill have to wait a while to throw my monies at them.

Looks a nice game but I didn't kickstart it as "Get the BETA at a pre-release price" kinda indicated you'd still have to pay for the game as well.

FatherJack wrote:Looks a nice game but I didn't kickstart it as "Get the BETA at a pre-release price" kinda indicated you'd still have to pay for the game as well.

they put an update up at some point to clarify that you will also get the full game on release but they couldnt edit the page to change how they worded it in the reward tiers

I have the beta. Turns out I had the beta for months and didn't read the email properly, but now I have the beta on Steam. UI is a bit shonky and I've not worked out how to automate tasks, but I think it's possible. It does look very nice though and feels like it should have some decent potential. Like an RTS Minecraft, sort of.

I have half an eye on this in a sort of 'minecrack with a point' interested way.

I haven't got to the point yet, just built a big pile of blocks with no purpose. I'm not even sure there's anything else in the game at the moment. Hopefully the golem attacks etc will come later (either later in the game or later in development).

Progress has been made. This isn't the most user friendly game, but it looks pretty and the little yellow blokes are adorable. I can now set up a mine supplying stone for a build project, which I can plan out in ghostly blue blocks, and have it all run along tickety-boo. Bridges are tricky because blocks aren't sticky like in Minecraft, so you can only really build diagonally upwards. Not a problem unless you want to cross to another floating island, which of course I immediately wanted to do. I managed it on my third game, which I've just scrapped due to me not being able to remove some doors I planted back to front, and in an error of the 'trial and' kind planted two more directly behind them so neither could open. In the middle of my bridge. You live and learn, but presumably later on there'll be a way to hack them down again. I have learnt how to spawn new blokes though (hint: it's not sexytiem) and use the weird tunnel interface. Short opinion so far - nice, but still not feature complete or bug free (obviously, it's a beta, although yes I'm aware a beta should be feature complete), and takes a bit of learning.

Now that this is about to hit Steam early access I gave it another look. It now has a survival mode where stone grobblies attack you at night, and the building system seems to flow a lot better. In short, it's coming along nicely (but maybe worth hanging on for a little longer unless you're really curious).

I was really curious.

But I enjoyed it. It was a very good evening time sink. It is really laggy and I managed to brick minions into walls without trying too hard, but from someone who can't play minecraft because if it's ui, this is a nice change.

Controls wise it's difficult in the respect that I'm a mong. If you're used to wasd controls then you'll be fine, but if you're a true left handed bummer like me, it breaks me a little. Need to suss out how/if I can change the controls to suit me. On saying that, the sprog had issues with this too.

Over all, laggy, buggy, but good fun. Agree with pants that it's not probably worth the £14.99.

I wasn't that curious, but I wanted to play minecraft in peace, so I bought them it.

Did have a fiddle though, seems like it needs a little feedback from the minions so you know why they've all downed tools and are refusing to work.

Even little thought bubbles with icons like they need an item or have no path would improve the experience massively.

That's a good point actually. Once you get to know the game it becomes fairly obvious why they've stopped, but not indicating it just makes the learning curve that bit steeper.