Castle Smasher: Royally good

Review Podgamer Recommended

Royally good

by Craig Grannell (November 4th, 2010 at 3:30 pm)

Game: Castle Smasher. Publisher: Donut Games. Price: 59p/€0,79/99¢. Buy the game

As you may have read, our own RevStu thinks Angry Birds should be shot in the head. But not everyone in the tranquil surrounds of Podgamer Village agrees. I quite like the game, but the somewhat imprecise nature of aiming often makes me want to smash my face off with a broken bird table.

Castle Smasher, by the ever-reliable Donut Games, is a similar sort of game, but its gameplay is such that I never feel the need to smash my face off with a castle. Because that would be stupid. And also because Castle Smasher is a lot more fun than Rovio’s game.

In Castle Smasher, you battle intergalactic aliens. Only kidding. You in fact smash castles.

The basic premise behind Castle Smasher is to grind your enemies to dust. You complete a level by flinging rocks at enemy strongholds and must utterly annihilate them to progress. You hurl rocks by dragging a targeting arrow and holding ‘fire’ until the power bar is at the appropriate point. Usefully, the strength of your previous shot is noted, enabling you to quite easily fire off several rocks in succession to the same target.

To provide a bit of variety, you occasionally come across power-ups—bouncier rocks, ‘fire stones’ that burn down whatever they hit, cash, and jailed guards. The last of those are worth breaking out of their confines early, because many enemy castles hold knights, which march towards your catapult and attack your guards. If your guards are defeated, your cowardly catapult guys will retreat. Some levels also provide the added complication of archers (aiming to kill your guards) and trundling caravans full of angry foes.

Given that your chums are armed with massive swords, you'd think they could break themselves out of wood cages. The idiots.

As with the better releases from Donut Games, Castle Smasher provides you with a few game modes. Arcade is the original web game, which is a five-castle effort that gives you an upgrade after each conquest. Choosing the right one is essential if you want to succeed. The Challenges mode provides you with 50 levels to conquer, each of which is scored using Donut’s standard three-star system. Although there are a few difficulty walls and the odd needlessly finicky level, progression through this part of the game is far less random than getting through Angry Birds. Finally, there’s Target Practice, which gives you unlimited targets through randomly generated levels.

Castle Smasher is a great little game. Its artwork might not be as ‘cool’ as that of Angry Birds, but it still has plenty of character. Most importantly, though, the controls feel solid. When you beat a level, you rarely feel like you’ve lucked your way through. This to my mind catapults* it past Angry Birds and makes it the best game of its type on the system.

* Yeah, I know. But I almost got to the end without making that pun.