I remember the first time I picked up Skyrim. Like many people in my age group, it was my first foray into the Elder Scrolls series, and I honestly had never played anything like it. My mind was blown by the sheer depth of the mechanics and world, and, despite the trademark Bethesda bugginess, I was enamored, spending hundreds of hours across multiple platforms and versions.
And boy, there have been a lot of versions, haven’t there? Despite (or perhaps due to) Skyrim’s colossal success, we’re still yet to see The Elder Scrolls VI, leaving us all desperate for our next visit to Tamriel (preferably not via another version of Skyrim – not sure what else Bethesda can add beyond some kind of 4D experience where you can smell and touch the horse poop). Unfortunately, there’s still no news of a TESVI release date, but Bethesda has bestowed upon us a few spinoffs set in the series’ world. The latest, entitled The Elder Scrolls: Castles, is what I’m here to talk about today.
Castles is a mobile game that puts you in charge of overseeing your very own kingdom. It’s a cross between a simulation and city builder game, sort of like a side-scrolling Clash of Clans meets Bit Life. You start off with your chosen leader, a small group of subjects, and just one room in your castle, then expand out from there.
The bulk of the gameplay is a pretty standard affair if you’re familiar with similar mobile games. You build rooms. You put workstations in those rooms. You assign little people to the workstations. The people use the workstations to generate resources on a timer. You use said resources to build more rooms and more advanced workstations. Rinse, repeat.
All subjects have a trait, such as emotional or leader, which dictates what jobs they naturally excel at. They also have a level which increases over time, boosting their proficiency at certain jobs, and you can equip them with outfits and tools to increase that proficiency even further. Finally, they all have four life stages – baby, child, adult, and elder. Adults and elders can work and get married, but only adults can have babies.
The Elder Scrolls: Castles runs on a real-time clock, where each real-world day equates to one year in your kingdom. Naturally, this means that processes also take real time, with your subjects grinding away at the workstations to produce various items.
The two most important items are oil and food – without oil, the processes within the castle come to a grinding halt. When your food drops below the required amount, your subjects begin to starve, slowly losing health until they die. Not only does this make you pretty unpopular, but it also means that you lose workers, so ensuring that your oil and food reserves are topped up is the most important thing in the game.
Beyond food and oil, you can produce all sorts of other items. You can use the mill to produce wood for building, the loom to generate fabric, the sewing table to produce outfits for your subjects, etc. You can also build a Shrine of Mara to marry two of your subjects, as well as a bed to have them procreate.
Occasionally, an icon appears above your ruler notifying you that you’ve got a royal decision to make. While there are quite a few scenarios that crop up, the most common rely on you choosing whether to sacrifice resources to keep your people happy or not. Sometimes, you also get the choice to tax your people into the ground. These decisions impact how the citizens and subjects feel about your ruler, and can have an impact on you further down the line.
On top of all of this, there’s also a constant stream of tasks to keep you busy – at least in the early stages of the game. You’ve got your introductory tasks, royal tasks, daily tasks, weekly tasks, orders… all of which are incredibly passive and non-challenging, essentially boiling down to things like building or upgrading workstations, producing certain resources, and the like. These reward you with either EXP, equipment, or currency.
At level 20, you unlock the ability to go out on quests. You can assign up to three characters to a quest, and each needs to be equipped with a weapon. The battles play out automatically from there, though you can manually command your team to attack specific targets and activate each character’s special skill, which is dictated by the weapon they use.
Quests have different challenges to complete, such as winning a battle within a certain time limit or with your whole team equipping a certain weapon type. In return, you earn gold, weapons, and other handy items. It’s super simple, but a nice addition that helps break up the resource management and building sim gameplay.
The controls are simple and pretty intuitive for the most part, especially the building, which many mobile games struggle with. Playing on my iPhone 13, the performance is pretty solid, though it does tend to make my phone quite toasty after a while, so older devices may struggle through long play sessions.
In terms of the links to The Elder Scrolls series overall, it feels somewhat skin-deep. Sure, there are a few Skyrim races like Khajiits and Argonians, as well as a couple of occasional references to specific deities or terminology from the series, but outside of that it’s a pretty generic medieval Europe-inspired fantasy world. Honestly, it could just as easily tie in to just about any similar fantasy IP – in fact, if it had Game of Thrones in the title, I doubt anyone would bat an eye. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but don’t go into the game expecting any fresh lore or world-building specific to the game series it’s tied to.
Now, onto my biggest gripe. The monetization is incredibly aggressive. There are heaps of bundles, two different payment plans for the premium pass, and more on offer. Well, on offer is a bit of an understatement – more like on display at every corner. When you hit a certain level, suddenly you’re brought to an abrupt halt as the game shoves its battle pass in your face. Shortly after, it pushes a big ol’ beginners bundle in front of you. If you dodge that one, you get the itty bitty beginners bundle flashing up on your screen, just in case the smaller price might pull you in.
Cassius the Elder who acts as your guide throughout the tutorials also pushes you to go check out the store to claim your daily gift. This is a legitimate requirement to progress in the early game – and, of course, said free gift is somewhat buried, forcing you to scroll through some of the premium items on offer. In the standard mobile game style, you can also occasionally sit through tedious ads to ‘earn’ random rewards. And, if that’s not enough, there are even level rewards that are locked behind the battle pass paywall.
Naturally, there’s also all those ‘time saving’ items I mentioned before. If you’re running low on food or oil, or you simply don’t want to wait until a process is done in order to claim a resource and get on with a task, you can use a speed-up potion. If you don’t have enough workers, you can instantly transform a child into an adult using an elixir of growth.
There are also health potions that allow you to heal a soldier instantly, both in battle and before it, if you don’t want to wait for them to heal up at a buffet. You get a few of these consumables for free by completing certain tasks, quests, or milestones, but the main way to get them is to purchase them with gems in the premium shop.
Gems are the main premium currency in The Elder Scrolls: Castles. You can earn some via quests and other tasks, but the easiest way to get them is via microtransactions. The smallest pack is a ‘pouch’ of 150 gems for £1.99, going all the way up to an ‘imperial coffer’ of 2k gems for £99.99 (proudly dubbed as the “best value” option). I’m unsure of the USD prices in the game, but that directly converts to a range of $2.59 to $130.30.
You can use gems to speed-up processes and upgrades or to purchase individual items, such as subjects (including the ‘Adoring Fan’ that appears in many Bethesda games), consumables, and equipment. You can also use gems to buy packs, which are essentially lootboxes that you “open to win gold, equipment, new subjects, and more” – though I feel the word ‘win’ is used very loosely here.
Now, none of these tricks are new, and they definitely aren’t exclusive to this game. In fact, pretty much all of the biggest and best mobile games use them. However, that doesn’t mean I agree with them in the slightest. And, to be honest, I might be more inclined to make a purchase if there weren’t banners, bundles, and battlepasses flashing before my eyes at every turn, as that leaves a very unpleasant taste in my mouth.
Overall, there are some enjoyable mechanics and systems in the game, and the graphics are quite charming in their own way. The music is very pleasant, capturing that classic Elder Scrolls fantasy game feel without being too overpowering. It’s also very adept at being an addictive game that you can dip into passively, and the gameplay is intuitive and easy to grasp while still giving you some freedom to play how you choose – plus, it’s pretty satisfying to see your kingdom grow and the people within it prosper (or struggle, if that’s what you prefer).
However, the heavy monetization woven into every facet of the game combined with the somewhat tenuous links to the world of The Elder Scrolls do make it feel like a bit of a cash grab using a large IP’s name to make it stand out in a sea of similar titles.
It’s enjoyable for what it is, and I’ve certainly had some fun dipping in now and then since launch. But if you struggle with impulse control, excessive spending, or an addictive personality, I’d recommend sticking it out until we hear more about The Elder Scrolls VI. Either that, or you can play another hundred hours in Skyrim, you do you.
If you decide on the latter, we’ve got a bunch of handy info to help you out, including our guides to Skyrim houses and Skyrim marriage so you can settle down and start your own homestead. Alternatively, we’ve got a list of the best games like Skyrim to keep you entertained while you wait for more news on TESVI.