We asked the team at WhootGames to share a bit about how Castles has developed to give everyone a deeper understand of the game and the story. Here’s what they have to say:
Castles came about the way we believe many games do: by accident. We were immersed in the development of other projects, but as usual we took time one Friday to bounce ideas for games around and Castles was one of them.
Combining colored objects isn’t exactly something new in the video game world so we wanted to add a twist to the age-old concept. First, we gave the blocks two characteristics: a color and an icon. That way you can combine one, the other, or both characteristics with the combination possibilities. Second, we changed the way the game is played by giving players control over characters (engineers) instead of the blocks themselves. Players control engineers who have to run around the tower pushing and pulling blocks to make combinations.
From the engineers arose the need to add a new line of movement so we created the scaffolding making a the grid 7×7 instead of 5×5.
Adding characters to the game world started to give Castles more personality and we decided to explore that facet by adding the tower (at first the game developed on the ground level) that would grow by getting materials and tools which is what made the blocks really make sense. The reason you need to build a tower is because your king, after being amazed by wonders of the world in travel magazines, wants to construct the tallest tower in the world. Building on that idea we created a town around the tower that grows alongside it and from the town came the idea of scenery beyond that with mountains and rivers.
We started thinking and rethinking the visual aspect. We opted for simple colors and low-poly shapes to give everything an origami, child-like feel.
During that phase of development all the assets changed numerous times while we kept developing a game mechanic which has changed very little since the initial prototype, but has been refined with every change.
Another critical moment was when we decided to add a little more stress on the player by introducing final bosses. Of all the designs we considered we finally agreed on five. All the bosses follow the design of the other levels, always based on blocks but they make the player use them in new ways to defeat them.
Getting to the point of having the mechanics, the story, and the final appearance of the story defined has been a long process, not without its challenges, but here at WhootGames we are very happy with what we’ve created.
The goal for Castles has been, from the beginning, for it to be a game that brings you back to those afternoons with friends or family, sitting on the sofa playing a video game (with plenty of teasing and jokes, of course), the room filled with chatter. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are optional, but highly recommended.