Castling!

So if you haven't visited the new oddlabs.com, you may not have heard that Oddlabs has developed a new game: Castling! This actually excited me a lot, because my two favorite things are Oddlabs and chess, and the thought of the two colliding is awesome... so needless to say I forked out 99 cents and supported them in their new venture. Here's my little spiel on it.

I'll preface this by saying I'm a chess junkie as it is, so as much as I believed in Oddlabs I was going in with a skeptical view from the get-go because a loooot of people have fucked up 'chess games' in the past. It took me about 2 days to get through all of the levels, and I gotta say it's a really neat game. It's not exactly chess as it's normally played, but rather just taking the basic movements of the pieces and applying a whole bunch of new mechanics with only one goal in mind: eliminate the enemy king. While its current levelset is pretty underdeveloped, the potential for future puzzles with the ideas they introduced is huge. There were even some tricky levels at times (and some of the achievements are really clever!!), but for anyone who plays at least rudimentary chess it's nothing impossible.

Overall I'd give it 4 stars, and the only thing making it miss out on 5 would be more levels. This may be a bit of a hyped up review just because I love chess and Oddlabs making a chess game is like my dream come true, but fuck it I really like this game.

Anyone else played it yet?



PS. Sune if you're ever reading this for some reason I'd totally be down to design some levels for you. Like actually. Pls.

I haven't yet!

Games with levels and a set type of gameplay (like chess) are games I don't really enjoy anymore - I prefer more dynamic strategy games such as Age of Empires and Tribal Trouble. And I also don't really get off at single player stuff, unless it's role-playing games (even then, still needs a multiplayer server to interest me).

Would be awesome if Oddlabs developed a role-playing game similar to Runescape but in their own theme (cartoony looking) .

I'll have to look into it soon, I started getting into chess a while ago and this would be pretty neat. I, too, don't enjoy that much of set gameplay although. First person shooters where the players are all different and often times other games such as Destiny or Battlefield capture my attention. However I will indeed look into this, it looks enjoyable for sure.

D e a t h y wrote:Games with levels and a set type of gameplay (like chess) are games I don't really enjoy anymore I prefer more dynamic strategy games...

While Castling may be written off as fairly static due to it being a collection of puzzles, normal chess is practically the definition of a dynamic strategy game, just more 'pure' than FPSs and RTSs.

EPIC_FAIL wrote:

D e a t h y wrote:Games with levels and a set type of gameplay (like chess) are games I don't really enjoy anymore I prefer more dynamic strategy games...

While Castling may be written off as fairly static due to it being a collection of puzzles, normal chess is practically the definition of a dynamic strategy game, just more 'pure' than FPSs and RTSs.

I mean dynamic in terms of user interaction. For example in chess all you can do is pick up a piece, and move it. Whereas games like Age of Empires, TT, etc are much more dynamic in the sense of being able to "do" more things during the game (obviously chess isn't even designed to be that kind of game, but you know what I mean).

Not really sure how to explain it in exact words, but basically games that have Puzzles and a limited amount of possibility for user interaction (chess etc) I don't like. Whereas games like Runescape, Age of Empires, etc just offer more excitement as there's a lot more to do.

D e a t h y wrote:

EPIC_FAIL wrote:

D e a t h y wrote:Games with levels and a set type of gameplay (like chess) are games I don't really enjoy anymore I prefer more dynamic strategy games...

While Castling may be written off as fairly static due to it being a collection of puzzles, normal chess is practically the definition of a dynamic strategy game, just more 'pure' than FPSs and RTSs.

I mean dynamic in terms of user interaction. For example in chess all you can do is pick up a piece, and move it. Whereas games like Age of Empires, TT, etc are much more dynamic in the sense of being able to "do" more things during the game (obviously chess isn't even designed to be that kind of game, but you know what I mean).

Not really sure how to explain it in exact words, but basically games that have Puzzles and a limited amount of possibility for user interaction (chess etc) I don't like. Whereas games like Runescape, Age of Empires, etc just offer more excitement as there's a lot more to do.

Yeah I get that actually, I haven't really gone back to Castling now that I've powered through all of the levels. If there were a level editor maybe that would get some long-term interest going...