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Anyone playing The Castle Doctrine?

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Ever since RPS previewed it in Oct, been waiting slavishly.

 

The alpha is now out, for the princely sum of ~$8 - half the full release cost.

 

It's blimmin difficult, particularly as there's no documentation around how the trap logic works - although that's part of the fun.

 

The 'robbing' section seems a little crap at the moment, as if you fill your house with rottweilers and nothing else, it's hard to get around, as you probably can't carry enough guns (v. expensive) or drugged meat.

 

So, some balancing required, or the game itself might reach its natural balance as people get more experienced.

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I poked it yesterday but didn't really figure out what was going on.

 

It's more of a puzzle game than what I was expecting, which... was more of a base building game, I guess? 

 

I'll probably youtube some tutorials this weekend to get a better impression of it. 

 

I like the presentation and the idea of it so far though.

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Bought in the second I saw it was available, even though I haven't read much on it beyond understanding the basic thematic premise. I trust Jason Rohrer enough now that I'm willing to lay down less than $10 for a thing he does without doubt.

 

Mechanically, it seems like the goal is to create mazes with a few critical paths that allow players to get to the proverbial treasure and escape without tools. I've only played about 15 minutes though, so I'm willing to be totally wrong about my understanding of what's going on.

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I purchased the game last night for no good reason, especially because I will never put any effort into learning the mechanics.

 

My home is so poorly designed it's hilarious.  I assumed that the tiny rectangle you first see is the entirety of your home, so I began placing walls accordingly.

 

Next I was told to test my home, which is when I discovered that the screen scrolled; my home was several times larger than I assumed.

 

It also meant that invaders could simply walk around all of my traps and walls to get to my vault.

 

So go to my house and take all of my money!

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Hey, my wife is dead!


post-8337-0-75211300-1363464134.png

 

After creating this sad house with incomplete rooms, it was robbed, my wife was murdered, and all of my money was stolen.  Rather than click the "suicide" button, I tested the house again and fell to my death into a pit.

 

I restarted, then created a house that used the walls to spell "JESUS FORGIVES," leaving the safe at the top of the map next to my family.  No traps, just a message.

 

Less than five seconds after creating that house, someone broke in, murdered my wife, and robbed me of everything.  The burglar's path taken and line of sight wouldn't have let him see more than "JESUS ORG," but who knows if he bothered to read a single letter?

 

post-8337-0-03647500-1363464774.png

 

As a burglar, I never took a single step into a home.  Every home I attempted to rob contained someone's dead wife steps away from the front door.  I broke in, looked around, got depressed, and left.

 

The Castle Doctrine is certainly a contender for Best Dead Wife Simulator of the year!

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Hey, my wife is dead!

attachicon.gifmike-castledoctrine.png

 

After creating this sad house with incomplete rooms, it was robbed, my wife was murdered, and all of my money was stolen.  Rather than click the "suicide" button, I tested the house again and fell to my death into a pit.

 

I restarted, then created a house that used the walls to spell "JESUS FORGIVES," leaving the safe at the top of the map next to my family.  No traps, just a message.

 

Less than five seconds after creating that house, someone broke in, murdered my wife, and robbed me of everything.  The burglar's path taken and line of sight wouldn't have let him see more than "JESUS ORG," but who knows if he bothered to read a single letter?

 

attachicon.gifmike-castledoctrine2.png

 

As a burglar, I never took a single step into a home.  Every home I attempted to rob contained someone's dead wife steps away from the front door.  I broke in, looked around, got depressed, and left.

 

The Castle Doctrine is certainly a contender for Best Dead Wife Simulator of the year!

OH MY GOD you are hilarious. 

Ok, I came in for a different reason. 

I was thinking about getting it, but then when I read about it, I thought "This looks prime for boosting" which frustrates the hell out of me. So I went to the forums to see if it is a problems. It appears that it is, but not in the way I was imagining. I was thinking that someone would organize friends or create multiple accounts in order to just farm money; but the reality seems a bit more interesting. People are buying multiple copies of the game in order to use one account to scout the fortress and then another in order to actually rob it. I read a little and found this post by largestherb:

 

majority of steam buyers will probably not even be aware of the ability to purchase the game from its own website, i doubt many steamies will even think about having more than one account.

i purchased a second account a long time ago because i found watching people try and solve my dances and button pushing thingies way too interesting. i didn't want to die foolishly and miss out on all the potential tapes!

it became a tool of revenge after 'the great laddering' when one user went through every house that featured 100000000000000000 trapdoors (pretty much every house at the time) and laddered them up.

it then became a means of further exploration as some very intriguing houses popped up that i just had to get in and see how they worked.

as of late it has mostly been just to poke around and carelessly rob attempt a robbery on every house in the neighbourhood.

byron died off due to forgetting that power supplies are flat which lead to an unfortunate incident with a cat sleeping on top of one at a very inopportune moment, so there is no impenetrable temple right now. although a house has popped up on the list that looks very much like it. that old 'gotta see how it works' bug is crawling around my ankles looking for a place to bite..

aaaaaaaanyway, i brought up the dual account question a while ago and jason didn't think it was an issue at the time. i can potentially see it changing, it all depends what our new steam friends get up to!

To be fair, the post is from May 2013. I still have an interesting point.

So if I'm reading this correctly, there was an event known to the general population as "the great laddering" when someone grieffed all of the houses that had an absurd quantity of trapdoors due to an imbalanced game. Not only that, but apparently design bugs were creating situations in which some of the fortresses became unsolvable, but remain as artifacts in the MMO world. "The temple"  Edit: Oh wait, I DID read it incorrectly. Fuck it, my misreading made it way more interesting.

I mean, sure; I don't want to play the game because of these types of problems, but once I accept that I'm not going to play it, I get kinda excited about how weird and magical this fictional space is becoming because of the dynamics between a design manifesting and a public gaming it. The idea that simple game-hacks open doors to new dimensions of these games, is fascinating to me. I am a bit of a purist when I play a game and I ignore any exploits I find, but I do have a appreciation for this tendency of sub-culture within a game to discover an entirely different way of playing it in which people that play the way the game was intended to be played are just... crops. I just don't want to be farmed.

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