Lately I've been grinding through my backlog again. Which means playing a lot of crap for a minute or two and moving on as Steam has far more than an acceptable amount of absolutely broken jank.

In diving through all this trash you occasionally find gems. Polished gems. Gems like Castle Storm.

Sure, at first is looks like a Crush the Castle clone (and shut up, I played that long before the one with birds with emotional issues), but a quick play of the first few levels shows it has more to offer in this genre.

You are Sir Gareth. Hero of the Realm! And the king has not given you a payrise because glory to the realm should be its own reward and you need to settle down. Thankfully for you the enemy decides to invade and take a gem of eternal life, a divine teardrop shed by a goddess when she saw your peoples ancestors fighting in an eternal war.

Hazzah! Fire off that ballista and knock that cocky red night off his horse. Then send in the troops to gather the level mcguffin. And then send off the Hero to fight in the middle of the field. AND THEN! Then you get to smash the enemy castle.

Phew!

In the intro tutorial the game teases all the main modes it has to offer. And you know what???... I enjoyed this. It is just a quick <1 min tease for most of them. No strategy, just a here is what you'll be doing later. And it somehow works!

Too many games of this genre like to give you tutorial after tutorial after bloody tutorial. And while the short (and skippable) into scenes to various levels do tell you the main objective, I did not encounter a constant barrage of popups showcasing everything.

Despite all this, it still manages to add extra flavour as you progress. Short spins on what you have learnt slightly modified in how they work. A basic example is rather than capturing the enemy flag from a castle and returning home, is to get your troops to a central location, Just like Lemmings, but you need to provide cover and spawn your own troops. Simple and effective.

Of course any game of this type is not without the ability to upgrade your troops. The weapons you can throw at the enemy. Magical abilities to cast on the battlefield. Resource spawn rates. And even the power of Sir I-want-more-pay Gareth himself!

But the ream gem is the ability to modify the castle design to your own layout. Strong walls. Clustered spawner rooms. Bonus ability and feature rooms. Your modifications will affect what you can do on each level just on the layout of this thing...
Or you can ignore all that and select a fairly powerful preset.

Colourful and vibrant. Even in the dark and spooky scenes. The game is obviously taking some inspiration from a certain company with a certain MMO in terms of aesthetic. And that's... Well fine. Original ideas are more on execution. I do like how it does look though.

And sound. Cartoonish but powerful slashes and explosions ramp into my headset as I went through the first half of the game. The music is inoffensive, neither annoying nor memorable, but can get a little annoying if you end up playing this for hours on end. It is a game to be played in bursts.

Alas I did not hear a Wilhelm, but there are a couple of Monty Python references. And that is rarely a bad thing.

Tower Defence Crusher games are a common genre nowadays. Even back in 2013 when this was released. Finding one that is polished and not a blatent quick cashgrab is a nice thing to find.
I'm not quite finished making my way the whole way through yet, and while I don't expect to play the DLCs, I feel I'm likely going to complete the main campaign over the next week or two.

Game Acquisition: Bundle Stars (Indie Legends 5)
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 7 march 2022
PC Used: Scorptec Master-RTX2070 2019 MK1

OS:Windows XP/Windows Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8
Processor:Single Core CPU @ 1.6GHz
Memory:512 MB RAM
Graphics:GeForce 6600 / Radeon 9800 / Intel HD 2000
DirectX®:9.0
Hard Drive:500 MB HD space
Sound:DirectX compatible sound card