Take the single–player card battling of Balatro and drizzle it lovingly over the strategic castle building of Age of Empires, and you serve up something like Castle V Castle. Inspired by classic browser game Castle Wars, this clever new turn-based strategy game from solo developer Nopopo and publisher Future Friends is funded in part by Slay the Spire dev Casey Yano (via the Among Us team’s indie publishing arm Outersloth), and it has a free demo on Steam that you can try right now.
The premise of Castle V Castle is very straightforward – build your castle walls up while attempting to turn your opponent’s structure into a pile of rubble. You do so with a deck of cards that do everything from laying more bricks to raise your tower’s height to fortifying your warriors’ arms, or impeding the enemy engineers to slow their progress. It’s a smart, simple turn-based strategy game that includes a standard run-based mode along with a daily challenge inspired by Wordle.
Nopopo’s solo dev ‘Folmer’ is best known for creating Devolver Tumble Time, Devolver Digital’s physics-based mobile puzzle game. In Castle V Castle, however, they’ve turned their attention to something more strategic. The goal is either to elevate your own fortification to the 25-meter mark or reduce your enemy’s base to a pile of dust.
In single-player mode, you’ll earn a choice of rewards after each fight, allowing you to curate your deck for future battles. You’ll also come across permanent stat boosts and single-use items designed to save you in a pinch. When your run comes to an end, you’ll unlock XP that can be spent on a range of gifts including new modes and more reward cards.
Alongside this is the Wordle-inspired daily challenge. This is a single battle where both sides begin with a completely randomized loadout. It’s the same fight for all players around the world, so you can compare notes with your friends and attempt to build up the biggest winning streak you can.
The Castle V Castle demo is available now on Steam. You can download it for free. There’s currently no release date set, but you can wishlist it if you want to be kept up to date with future details as they arrive.
Alternatively, seek out more delightful gems from smaller studios with the best indie games, and shuffle through the best card games on PC as well.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or join our community Discord to stay in the know.