''Castle Story'' is a sandbox and

real-time strategy Real-time strategy (RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games that do not progress incrementally in turns, but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time". By contrast, in turn-based strategy (TBS) games, players take turns to pla ...

game developed by Sauropod Studio. Funded through

crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and Alternative Finance, alternative finance. In 2015, over was rais ...

website

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, K ...

in 2012, the game launched in September 2013 in

early access Early access, also known as alpha access, alpha founding, paid alpha, or game preview, is a funding model in the video game industry by which consumers can purchase and play a game in the various pre-release development cycles, such as pre-alph ...

, and was fully released in August 2017.

Gameplay

In ''Castle Story'', the player is in control of workers called "Bricktrons" which can be directed to gather resources, build castles and fight enemies. The aim is to build a castle that can withstand attacks from creatures and other players. The game takes place on massive

floating islands A floating island is a mass of floating aquatic plants, mud, and peat ranging in thickness from several centimeters to a few meters. Floating islands are a common natural phenomenon that are found in many parts of the world. They exist less co ...

Development

''Castle Story'' was the debut game developed by Sauropod Studio, an indie game developer based in

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple- ...

, Canada. The game was first announced in December 2011; around this time, Sauropod was a team of two people. Sauropod Studio was formally founded as a company on 24 April 2012 by François Alain (

general director A director general or director-general (plural: ''directors general'', ''directors-general'', ''director generals'' or ''director-generals'' ) or general director is a senior executive officer, often the chief executive officer, within a governmen ...

), Germain Couet (artistic director), and Benoît Alain (lead programmer and chief technical officer). A

campaign was launched through the website

on 27 July 2012, seeking . This goal was reached and exceeded within five hours of the campaign's launch. The campaign concluded after one month, with a total of pledged. Sauropod credited

Markus Persson Markus Alexej Persson (; born 1 June 1979), also known as Notch, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is best known for creating the sandbox video game ''Minecraft'' and for founding the video game company Mojang in 2009. Pers ...

, the creator of the game ''

Minecraft ''Minecraft'' is a sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios. The game was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language. Following several early private testing versions, it was first made public in May 2009 before bein ...

'' who publicly approved of the game, with leading the Kickstarter campaign to the success it had.

Beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bē̂ta or ell, βήτα, víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labi ...

versions of the game were later shared with backers who had pledged or more. ''Castle Story'' was made publicly available as a paid

game through the digital distribution platform

Steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporizat ...

on 23 September 2013. The game was fully released on 17 August 2017 for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

and Microsoft Windows, with Sauropod shifting to bugfixes and developing post-launch content. Following onto the release of ''Castle Story'', Sauropod began production on a second game, ''Mirador''. This game had a troubled development, frequently shuffling the

designer A designer is a person who plans the form or structure of something before it is made, by preparing drawings or plans. In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, products, processes, laws, games, graphics, services, or exp ...

position. A Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign seeking did not manage to get funded halfway and Sauropod failed to find a

publisher Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...

to finance the game. Instead, the Canadian Media Fund invested . As ''Mirador'' drew closer to release, it came to the studio's employees attention that the money the studio had would not suffice to keep it running until the end of 2019. The game was eventually released on 26 July 2019 without prior early access availability. The idea of using early access was considered but ultimately rejected as the studio did not plan to support the game greatly post-launch. Sauropod's management assured its employees that the majority would move on to the studio's next project. However, on 23 September 2019, it was reported that, due to the foregoing money mismanagement, Sauropod had laid off all of its 20 employees. François Alain and Couet stated in October 2019 that stated that Sauropod was still active, despite having laid off all staff.

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://www.castlestory.net/en/ 2017 video games Indie video games Kickstarter-funded video games Linux games MacOS games Multiplayer and single-player video games Real-time strategy video games Survival video games Video games developed in Canada Video games set in castles Video games with voxel graphics Windows games