Defend Your Castle Review

By Dan Whitehead Published 5 August, 2008

Resistance is feudal.

Version tested: Wii

With so many games greedily - and presumptuously - placed in the premium 1000-Point WiiWare price bracket, it's refreshing to be able to report on a title that knows its limits.

A remake of the popular internet game, it asks you to live up to the title by repelling wave after wave of stick-men invaders. You do this by picking them up and flinging them as hard as you can so that they squish on the ground. In the original, this is a messy and bloody affair. Here, in Nintendo-land, it's all been sanitised with a deliberately lo-fi hand-made feel.

Like those epic biro battles scrawled on the covers of countless schoolbooks, it's as if a malevolent child's imagination has burst into life. Some of the crudely sketched barbarians carry lolly stick battering rams. Others roll cap-gun ammunition instead of demolition equipment. Giants arrive with heads made from cola bottle tops. All are determined to reduce the "helth" of your castle to zero.

For each invader you toss to their doom, you earn points and these can be traded in between rounds to repair damage, increase your health or upgrade the castle to offer more defences. The Pit of Conversion, yours for just 5000 points, is a pot of blue paint into which you can drop your enemies. They then become your soldiers, and can be assigned to different duties by adding special abilities to each of the four castle turrets. Archers, magicians and cap-wheeling suicide bombers are your offensive options, while yet more can be tasked with repairing damage as it's inflicted.

'Defend Your Castle' Screenshot 1

The Pepsi army had their work cut out at the Burberry catle.

It's all rather charming and fun, but the pace and structure of the game are such that you'll have purchased everything within a few hours - and probably developed a repetitive strain injury from making the exact same flicking motion hundreds of times. You can easily exit each level with over 40,000 points, which is more than enough to purchase every upgrade within the first ten levels. Not that it really matters, since your best defence is always your own flicking actions - the archers are hopeless, doing nothing to fend off attackers directly at the gates, while the four magic attacks are cute but limited. The demolition men are quite useful, but you can just as easily click on an enemy bomber for the same effect.

It's good to see another internet developer getting the chance to make some money from their hard work. They've just about fleshed out the game enough to make 500 Points a reasonable asking price, especially with four-player co-op, but it's still a very small and shallow game that gives away too much too soon. There's definitely potential here to build something more robust, with multiple power-ups and numerous enemy types, but Defend Your Castle becomes a mindless slog far too quickly to warrant repeat plays.

5 / 10

Read the Eurogamer.net scoring policy
Picture of Dan.

About Dan Whitehead

Dan has been writing for Eurogamer since 2006 and specialises in RPGs, shooters and games for children. His bestest game ever is Julian Gollop's Chaos.

Read more articles from Dan by visiting the Dan Whitehead archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (13) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Darren #1 4 years ago

    Hurray for mediocre Wii games and the fact that Nintendo knows that they'll sell... you only have to look at the UK Top 40 to see that. Wii = license to print money! ;)

  • Ranger101 #2 4 years ago

    Let's not celebrate mediocrity.

  • DFawkes #3 4 years ago

    Awesome game, reasonable price. The fact that it can be played free on the web may put some off, but I urge those people to at least play the web game, it's really good :)
    Edited by 1 at 05/08/08 @ 09:36

  • Max_Powers #4 4 years ago

    Great sub-header. 'Resistance is feudal'. Lolling

  • Landmaster #5 4 years ago

    @ Darren

    Its not like Nintendo made it.

  • Darren #6 4 years ago

    @Landmaster - No, but it's presumably Nintendo that certify all these games for publication. ;)

  • Der_tolle_Emil #7 4 years ago

    5/10 for that price isn't all that bad. I'm sure there are enough people out there enjoying this quite a lot just as there are people who don't get on with Halo 3 or GTA IV. Nintendo can't really reject those titles especially seeing how bad 3rd party support was the last generation.

  • gingerlink #8 4 years ago

    All Nintendo do to wiiware titles is check they're bug-free, other than that, they get certified whatever, so the lowly publishers stand more of a chance...

  • CallousB #9 4 years ago

    "Not that it really matters, since your best defence is always your own flicking actions - the archers are hopeless, doing nothing to fend off attackers directly at the gates, while the four magic attacks are cute but limited"

    Hmm..that makes me wonder how long you played the game. You won't make it past level 50 or so without a load of archers. For £3.50 you really can't go wrong. It's a fun title which makes good use of the Wii controls...one of my fave Wiiware games.

  • smelly #10 4 years ago

    @Darren: Hurray for 360 fangirls desperately pressing refresh on the main page every day and violently masturbating when they see a wii game get a low score before rushing to the forums to tell us how crap the wii is compared to their breakdown box.

  • smelly #11 4 years ago

    >For £3.50 you really can't go wrong.

    Yes you can.. you can play this game online.. for FREE!

  • username #12 4 years ago

    So.... not quite the Wii's answer to Pixel Junk Monsters then?

  • siro #13 4 years ago

    What CallousB said. Demolition Men are about the only absolutely useless asset. Archers are a must have though. I played it for about 3 hours first (it will need this long until you see the final enemies, which the reviewer probably hasn't) and then came back here and then for some more action (US Wii).

    Giving 5/10 seems plain wrong to me. You obviously didn't really play it for long.