Review: Castles of Mad King Ludwig

[LordGek]

At $10 Canadian, this is a hard sell for me without the chance to play it with my friends who don't live near here. Or my wife when we just want to sit across the room from each other and veg without breaking out the table, getting all the pieces out, sorting them, etc.

Sure, the campaign may be fun, and if it was $7 like Suburbia was (back when the exchange rate was better and iOS apps cost the same for us as they did the Americans, I might have considered it.

Add that multiplayer, and I'm there.

The dev stated regarding async mp: "There is definitely a chance of that happening!"

[Trigati]

Well, for some reason I can't get the training to work on my iPad Air. I get the initial text, click the green shield, then nothing. Tapping on Tower 1 does nothing, tapping in the middle section of the towers does nothing, clicking the red X to go back ends up going back to the initial castle screen which doesn't minimize to the castle, but stays with the word TRAINING blown up on the screen. Very disappointed right now.

[rinelk]

Well, for some reason I can't get the training to work on my iPad Air. I get the initial text, click the green shield, then nothing. Tapping on Tower 1 does nothing, tapping in the middle section of the towers does nothing, clicking the red X to go back ends up going back to the initial castle screen which doesn't minimize to the castle, but stays with the word TRAINING blown up on the screen. Very disappointed right now.

Weird bug--I'm also on an iPad Air, so it isn't unversed to the hardware. Have you tried killing the app, or restarting the iPad all the way?

[rinelk]

Okay, forget restarting--apparently this was a bug in the app, and is already fixed. Download the new update and you should be good to go.

[whovian223]

At $10 Canadian, this is a hard sell for me without the chance to play it with my friends who don't live near here. Or my wife when we just want to sit across the room from each other and veg without breaking out the table, getting all the pieces out, sorting them, etc.

Sure, the campaign may be fun, and if it was $7 like Suburbia was (back when the exchange rate was better and iOS apps cost the same for us as they did the Americans, I might have considered it.

Add that multiplayer, and I'm there.

The dev stated regarding async mp: "There is definitely a chance of that happening!"

yep, in response to me!

(I'm hist over at BGG...wish I could change it to go with all of my other online identities)

I was very happy to hear that.

[Mirefox]

The developer for Splendor told us there would be multiplayer. The developer for Tyrranid Invasion told us there would be multiplayer. The developer for Forbidden Desert told us there would be multiplayer. The developer for Alien Frontiers told us there would be multiplayer. The developer for Steam told us there would be multiplayer. The list goes on.

It is really easy for a developer to go on a forum and assure everyone that multiplayer is planned. It is something entirely different to actually implement it. My rule of thumb at this point is that if it doesn't actually have multiplayer, it never will, and it is up to them to prove me wrong.

[Trigati]

Okay, forget restarting--apparently this was a bug in the app, and is already fixed. Download the new update and you should be good to go.

Yep, the update fixed the bug that was causing the issue.

[rwould]

Personally I do not care for online multiplayer. I do not think games should get marked down because it is not available. X-Com has no online multiplayer but it does not make it any worse. It is up to the games designers if they implement it, and this review strikes me as marking them down because it is not there.

Given the low volumes of players across time that stay playing games online and the extra development work required I cannot blame them for not implementing it. I think a vocal few go on about it whilst most players are quite happy just getting to play the games on their devices.

[Mirefox]

@rwould

First, I thought X-Com did, in fact, have online multiplayer. Regardless, x-com has always been a video game series. I personally think it is rather egregious when you take a game that was designed to be played at a table with/against per people and then you completely bastardize the social experience by leaving out online. If Ted Alspach had designed a solitaire castle building game and then ported it over, that is one thing; as is, I have as much interest in playing Castles solo as I do playing One Night Ultimate Warewolf all by myself.

[rinelk]

Personally I do not care for online multiplayer. I do not think games should get marked down because it is not available. X-Com has no online multiplayer but it does not make it any worse. It is up to the games designers if they implement it, and this review strikes me as marking them down because it is not there.

Given the low volumes of players across time that stay playing games online and the extra development work required I cannot blame them for not implementing it. I think a vocal few go on about it whilst most players are quite happy just getting to play the games on their devices.

As a reviewer, I try to review a game in the context of the audience of people interested enough to read a review. Castles is clearly interesting to some people who would really like to play it multiplayer (and I've heard that elsewhere, not just in the comments here). If the review were a five, I suspect some of them would immediately download it without reading for caveats, and would be very disappointed. A four is still a strong enough score that someone interested in the game will usually want to read more carefully to learn whether the game is likely to suit them. My expectation is that readers will interpret scores in the light of their preferences, so those who don't care about the issues identified in the review should treat the game as a "buy", while those for whom those issues are a deal-breaker may see it as a "don't buy"--those are the two review scores most people are really reading for, I think.

If you don't care about online multiplayer, this is a nice implementation of the game, but I'd still be just a little uncomfortable with a five, for reasons which might be more apparent from the images than the words. The visual impact isn't bad, but the design looks relatively flat--strong work from a solo programmer and nicely not distracting, but also not reflective of the merits some other games get from hiring professional artists. As one of the captions indicates, there's only one level of AI. The menu structure surprised me a bit and the tutorial leaves some important details unexplained. Even taken together, I'd be a little uncomfortable docking a full point for these issues, but that leaves the lack of online multiplayer in the role of costing the game a fraction of a point rather than a whole one.

So, those are some perspectives which shape my thinking about reviewing. They don't make yours irrelevant, but they balance it against the needs of other readers and my own intuitions. It's still great to hear from people who confirm the impressions of the developer--that makes me more confident in my tentative view that this was a daring but probably justified choice about where to put development effort.