Quick Look: The Castle Doctrine

I think I'm officially getting tired of the 8/16-bit art style now.

Man, this seems super interesting but losing everything when you die seems really frustrating. It's an awesome idea though. I wish I wanted to play it more.

Yeah.. seems like people will break the mechanics of this game immediately making houses that are virtually impossible without already knowing the solution and then have a second account where they make super easy farming houses to get money to buy paintings. Seems like it could have used a couple more passes in the design phase. Interesting concept tho..

The permadeath really seems to break this game. You get one shot at a house, and a person could easily make a puzzle hard enough that almost no-one could solve it first try with limited information. Several of the houses Vinny took three steps into them and was already trapped and dead, or forced to choose between several random hallways and hope it works out.

There's no real puzzle-solving in that, and permadeath means you can't try again and figure out what the solution is. Plus you start from nothing and have to take tons of time to set up a whole new house. If I could freely try puzzles and build puzzles, then I could see playing this, otherwise it's just an exercise in frustration.

That is really no excuse anymore. Yes no one is expecting AAA like graphics but if you look at something like no man's sky or grimrock 2 you can clearly see that even with 2-3 people you can archive really great things and not cut on graphics either.

Exactly it's so breakable in so many ways it's kind of absurd. It's a good idea, but so poorly balanced. given the current tools it's kind of a dead game already.

There are lots of things I find unappealing about this game, but I actually like the look. I'd imagine that the designer does too. If you don't like it, just don't play it.

(also, you need to stop using No Man's Sky as an example of how a small team can make great graphics. Sure Hello Games is only 4 guys, but they have made 6 incarnations of Joe Danger that have all been pretty successful. That affords you the experience and wealth that someone like Jason Rohrer just doesn't have. Aside from the fact that he probably wanted this game to look like it does.)

You know... They should... Speak in... pauses... Like the trailer... For this game... did.

This reminds me of Mighty Quest for Epic Loot a lot.

So, is the point of the game to use the backpack tools to totally circumvent the user-created puzzles? Because it sounds like it'd be pretty close to impossible to figure out how to break into a house legit...

The game doesn't sound very fun. Didn't really seem like a great Quick Look, since Vinny wasn't able to break into any houses.

So glad they QL'd this because the latest Bombcast made this sound like a fever dream I had.

Looks pretty terrible. Seems impossible to successfully break in and it takes way too long to set up a house.

Can't say I have any clue on how this game's robbing component might be balanced as it seems excessively punishing in its current form, hopefully the dev figures something out because the concept is solid.

So from my understanding, you can enter someone's house right from the start without building anything, scout around and leave without taking anything. Then you can come back later to the same house after buying tools you think will help bypass traps. Keep at it until you die.

Or alternatively, you can spend it all on home defense, and your game will basically be watching tapes and observing player behavior, trying to modify your little labyrinth to account for tools until finally you lose it all and die(?).

That doesn't sound so bad. At least not as bad as this comments section implies. Vinny just didn't really follow through on his cool trap idea, nor did he take the robbery stuff seriously. This is a quick look, after all. That kind of enjoyment would be hard to show in a quick video like this unless he's played a bit of the game before hand.

I haven't played the game myself so I can't really defend it, but the criticism here seems a bit harsh.

Edit: or wait. . .that doesn't make sense. If you leave without building anything people will just rob you. Man, that does seem kind of lame now that I think about it. . .

It's just came to me watching the video again: the guy with the $320.000 is Jeffrey William Mccoy.

BIG JEFFREY IS STILL A THREAT!!!

I predict a small base of hardcore players will learn the mechanics inside and out, but most people will overlook it or shortly move on. Like Dwarf Fortress, but without the personality, and with a reliance on multiplayer.

Which means the people who do stick around will be like dueling mad scientists, daring each other to try to infiltrate their impenetrable lairs.

Probably someone has made the connection, but this seems like this is a grim and politically loud version of "the Mighty quest for Epic loot"... without ugly microtransactions.

Probably somewhat offensive to the developer I guess.

Interesting concept though.

I made a Steam GB group for The Castle Doctrine. Come share your successes and heartbreaking failures. http://steamcommunity.com/groups/GBCastleDoctrine

This looks far too difficult. I love the idea though. I just wont have the patience.

Brilliant concept. Bad implementation.

When 90% of your game is building I believe there are better ways to do it.

Not sure if the design is meant to be so minimalist for a reason, but the interface could do a lot more to make building, and understanding what you are building, a better process. I wouldn't go so far to say it's sloppy because I imagine there must be a certain amount of intention behind it's minimalist design. But it strikes me as a frustration way to do things. Especially since you build again and again from scratch.

So it's a game where you have to solve a puzzle, that only the creator can know the one, and only one, solution to, if you die, it's permadeath. There's no way besides complete luck to make it through a house? Yeah I don't think this guy has to worry about selling his game, sales or not.

The idea behind this seems really good, but like others have said, the implementation seems pretty awful. The "your family needs a clear shot to the exit" mechanic seems like an attempt to balance what could easily be a hideously unbalanced game, but I don't think it really goes far enough.

On behalf of the burglars, there's just so little information that you can easily be "surprised" by something that's impossible to escape. There need to be better ways for burglars to have situational awareness of what they're heading into.

Perhaps there could be a "recon" mode where you can scout out the house and find hints towards what sort of tools might help you in that house?

On top of all that, the building seems pretty clumsy and takes too long. Permadeath on testing seems dumb, especially with no way – as @jeff mentioned on the podcast – no way of quickly reloading the house you've been working on.

Interesting concept, but a whole lot of work would need to be done to balance it out and make it fun to play for more than an hour or two.

I can be the master of my domain.

"Lord of the manor, king of the castle..."

Excellent subtle Back to the Future 2 reference.

What a bizarre game. Not sure if it's "fun", per se.

Looks interesting.

So is it safe to say the only way to win this game is not to play? Because I think that's what I'll be doing.

I didn't know this game animated so poorly, wow. Be that as it may, the concept is super cool but I don't see any fun in it either. I'd say I'd buy it when 75% off but we know that ain't happening.

I hope someone snags it and makes it look and play more tantalizing for my dumb tastes.

@drewbert LITHIUM MODE ON

Good point, but the game has been in alpha for a year and people still consistently rob new houses within the first couple minutes. There are a lot who just waltz in and out to see if there is easy money to be had, but you still find people genuinely trying to solve the puzzle, in my case some people took as many as 900 steps. I think it comes down to that as a big draw is just the thrill of finally figuring out a tricky house or getting it by complete luck.

Even though I can respect the idea of it, the permadeath is a big turn-off. A puzzle game where you essentially "start over" every time you eff up sounds like it'd be more frustrating than anything.

For a game like this, I'd like to be able to save multiple layouts and have my friends run them, and vice versa. As is, it's kind of like a no-win situation if I invited my friend over to my house and he died and lost everything he'd done because of it. That'd suck for him and I wouldn't feel great about it either.

I suppose that just means I'm not the right audience for it though.

Funny, I'm watching this video and I get word that my house was broken into last night. Real life, not the game. They apparently tried to break through the front porch, but the cops were called and scared them off. I live in New York, so "stand your ground" or "castle doctrine" laws don't exist, but I'd have loved to unload a couple shots into the floor of my porch. This fucking country, man... The poor parts of town are swallowing up what used to be the middle class parts of town.

Even so, I'm glad my state doesn't have ludicrous "Castle Doctrine" laws. This post was irrelevant, for the most part, but I'm furious and had to say something to someone about this.

This is bloody fascinating, seems like one of those games where you need to pay full attention to if you're sitting down to play it.

I don't like the developer's philosophy of "This game doesn't need to be fun because it's so unique."

I instinctively heard the "hello, hello" dialogue as I read that.

I like the concept. If there was some sort of procedurally generated single player mode, balanced properly with house layout saving, that would interest me. Multiplayer just kills the fun to be had, at least from my perspective.

As is not interested.

This game is on sale on steam...

Disregarding my other problems with this game. That's not a puzzle that's a gamble. A puzzle is something you can see and solve. If you can't see the puzzle it's no longer a puzzle, because there is no way to solve it.

The part where you play the game seems pretty shitty. The level editor looks pretty terrible and the fact you can't load in saved maps kills the game for me. It basically looks like it's been made by an academic that wants to try and make something new without being concerned to make it fun. A prototype of sorts that would go along with a scientific paper.

I really like the idea, but the fact that you have to rebuild your house everytime you die doesn't sound that great. I'll probably pass because of that.

I don't know why I just spent $8 on this... Stuck in a small, windowed mode. No way to view your whole map. Scrolling around is annoying. Spend a while making a decent map, trying to figure out how everything works, then go try robbing someone else. Die withing a few seconds and your whole house is gone. No template to reload from, crappy controls. Ugly game. You lose your house if you screw up just when testing it out. Could have been a bit of fun. Too bad. I listened to the GB interview with the dev... he kind of annoyed me. At first I almost agreed with his whole thing about game sales, but after a while he kinda came off as a condescending prick. What was all of that talk about "tricking people" with sales? So full of shit it was coming out of his ears. Oh, and the game is on sale on Steam for 25% off, despite all of that lol. 50% if you got the alpha.

I think a decent deterrent to breaking into someone's house is knowing you might get killed doing it. I don't understand how you see Castle Doctrine laws as "ludicrous." If anyone tried breaking into my house while I was home, I'm shooting to kill (assuming my two big assed dogs haven't gotten to him first) regardless of the law. If you attack someone or break into someone's private home (where they don't know what your intentions are) as far as I'm concerned, you've forfeited any and all rights, including the right to live. Not everybody can count on the police, nor should you have to.

@r3beld0gg: No one is disputing that. The part that's "ludicrous" is being able to shoot the mailman dead and claim you were defending yourself.

Yep, if that were actually true, that would be pretty silly. But that isn't what castle doctrine is.

Incidentally, this game isn't, either. It's The Purge.

I don't get all the arguing in comments. I picked it up today and I've had a lot of fun. Made my house a branching path of hallways so they have a ~7% chance of guessing the right path, the other 93% end in death, unfortunately that chance is doubled for every wall they can break down. If I get enough money I have enough room for a second tier of paths which will lower it to 0.4% chance of guessing the right path.

I was interested by the trailer, but seeing the game, that's all gone now. I thought the house was just a single panel. Having to scroll across a huge 3x3 square to build a house? Then having it evaporate when you die raiding someone else? Damn.

If the majority of people here can identify the same significant flaws in this game's mechanics after a cursory glance, then surely the developer realized those concerns long before this game got into alpha. Sorry developer, but you don't get to ignore input from players and then blame Steam discounts for the small number of people likely to buy this game.

You can't just say that isn't what it is without backing it up with... anything. What I posed was one example of what can happen under "castle doctrine" or "stand your ground" laws. Sure, you might be able to get away with killing someone on your property in other states, but in states that have those laws you have a much higher chance of getting away with it. You basically put your life at risk anytime you knock on the door of a stranger's house, and the killer has a much higher chance of getting away with it.

I feel like Dungeon Keeper did this better, back in the 90's. Both DK and DK2 are $6 on GOG.