''The Castle Doctrine'' is a 2014
strategy
Strategy (from Greek στρατηγία ''stratēgia'', "art of troop leader; office of general, command, generalship") is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty. In the sense of the "art ...
video game
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...
developed and published by
Jason Rohrer
Jason Rohrer (born November 14, 1977) is an American computer programmer, writer, musician, and game designer. He publishes most of his software into the public domain (Public domain software) and charges for commercial platform distributed ve ...
for
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
,
OS X
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 computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
, and
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 ...
via
Valve
A valve is a device or natural object that regulates, directs or controls the flow of a fluid (gases, liquids, fluidized solids, or slurries) by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically fittings ...
's
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 vaporization ...
platform. The game was released on January 29, 2014 for all platforms and is available as
public domain software
Public-domain software is software that has been placed in the public domain, in other words, software for which there is absolutely no ownership such as copyright, trademark, or patent. Software in the public domain can be modified, distributed, ...
on
SourceForge
SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirrorin ...
. Set in the early 1990s, it pits players against one another as they invade others' houses and attempt to steal money from their vaults, while also setting up traps and other obstacles to keep their own vaults safe.
In creating the game, Rohrer was influenced by his childhood fear of his house being robbed, numerous publicized shootings, and his own political views regarding
gun rights
The right to keep and bear arms (often referred to as the right to bear arms) is a right for people to possess weapons (arms) for the preservation of life, liberty, and property. The purpose of gun rights is for self-defense, including securi ...
and home invasions. During development and
beta testing
Software testing is the act of examining the artifacts and the behavior of the software under test by validation and verification. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to apprecia ...
, the game went through several changes that increased its difficulty. It received mixed reviews from critics, with some praising the design and creativity and others finding it hard to empathize with the game's intended message.
Gameplay
![The Castle Doctrine house screenshot](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/The_Castle_Doctrine_house_screenshot.jpg)
''The Castle Doctrine'' incorporates elements of
puzzle
A puzzle is a game, Problem solving, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together (Disentanglement puzzle, or take them apart) in a logical way, in order to arrive at th ...
,
strategy
Strategy (from Greek στρατηγία ''stratēgia'', "art of troop leader; office of general, command, generalship") is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty. In the sense of the "art ...
,
stealth,
and
roguelike
Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a subgenre of role-playing computer games traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player characte ...
games,
viewed from a
2D perspective.
It focuses on maintaining and protecting a vault of money stored in one's house from intruders. These intruders are actually other players of the game; likewise, the player can invade others' houses and steal their money—presented in a list rather than found through exploration—in the same way. This list shows a pre-determined three-name pseudonym of each player, the number of dollars contained in their vault, how many others have tried to rob it, and how many have died in the process.
All deaths in the game are
permanent
Permanent may refer to:
Art and entertainment
* ''Permanent'' (film), a 2017 American film
* ''Permanent'' (Joy Division album)
* "Permanent" (song), by David Cook
Other uses
* Permanent (mathematics), a concept in linear algebra
* Permanent (cy ...
;
upon dying, the player must create a new character.
The player can protect their vault in a number of ways, such as building walls, keeping
guard dog
A guard dog or watchdog (not to be confused with an attack dog) is a dog used to watch for and guard property against unwanted or unexpected human or animal intruders.
The dog is discerning so that it does not annoy or attack the resident hum ...
s,
setting up traps such as electrified floors and bottomless pits,
and giving guns to the player's family members so that they can defend the vault as well. The game does not punish the player for family members—by default, a wife and two children—being murdered by intruders; the player can even view footage of the incident afterwards. Rather, protecting the money is the goal the game emphasizes. The player starts off with $2,000 in cash and steals more from others' vaults; it can be used to purchase more objects to defend one's own vault.
Additionally, a house is not accessible by thieves when its owner is retooling it for defense.
When invading another's house, the player can attempt to deter these defenses in such ways as smashing windows, dismantling walls, short-circuiting machines, and even drugging guard dogs with tainted meat,
in addition to killing any residents that are armed.
Reaching a vault is always possible with enough skill; the game forces players to escape their own traps before other players can access them. Being caught in one's own traps has the same consequence as any other trap in the game:
permadeath
Permadeath or permanent death is a game mechanic in both tabletop games and video games in which player characters who lose all of their health are considered dead and cannot be used anymore. Depending on the situation, this could require the p ...
.
Development
''The Castle Doctrine'' was created by
indie
Indie is a short form of "independence" or "independent"; it may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Gaming
*Independent video game development, video games created without financial backing from large companies
*Indie game, any game (board ...
developer Jason Rohrer; its ideas were drawn from Rohrer's childhood anxieties about his family's house being burgled, and his adult sense of responsibility over protecting his family.
The game's central theme is the
castle doctrine
A castle doctrine, also known as a castle law or a defense of habitation law, is a legal doctrine that designates a person's abode or any legally occupied place (for example, a vehicle or home) as a place in which that person has protections and ...
and includes the issue of
gun rights
The right to keep and bear arms (often referred to as the right to bear arms) is a right for people to possess weapons (arms) for the preservation of life, liberty, and property. The purpose of gun rights is for self-defense, including securi ...
; Rohrer created it partially as an "
artistic statement" on defending one's family through violence.
He summarized his goals with the game as creating something "that makes you feel violated and makes you want to protect stuff that’s yours, and puts you in the process of securing what’s yours." However, he has remarked that the consequence of making players feel hypocritical—since they are invading others' homes as well—was partially intentional and an "elegant" idea.
Rohrer noted in an interview his aversion to creating a "ridiculous caricature of some post-apocalyptic man’s world, where we’ll all just robbing each other," and instead called his game
pre-apocalyptic in setting and style. In terms of aesthetics, Rohrer aimed for a "very clean, no frills, no fluff, no filler kind of design" that emphasized function in all of its objects. He has noted that some players have complained about not being able to decorate their houses non-functionally, but is unsympathetic, saying that the game is not ''
FarmVille
''FarmVille'' is a series of agriculture-simulation social network game developed and published by Zynga in 2009. It is similar to ''Happy Farm'' and ''Farm Town''. Its gameplay involves various aspects of farmland management, such as plowing l ...
''. The game was, however, influenced by ''
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 being ...
'', which—while heavily tied to cosmetic decoration—involves similar themes of protecting one's creations from other players as in ''The Castle Doctrine''.
Rohrer thought of adding family members for the player's character early in the game's development, but scrapped it at first because of the extra complexity and not knowing how to make them more than inanimate objects. After a dream, however, he was inspired to see if there was a practical way to implement them that would further the game's "moral dimension."
Release
''The Castle Doctrine'' was first released as a
paid alpha and sold at half-price from March 2013 until its official release on January 29, 2014.
As was visible through its history of updates during
beta testing
Software testing is the act of examining the artifacts and the behavior of the software under test by validation and verification. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to apprecia ...
, it went through several changes, primarily the increase of gameplay difficulty. One was the addition of dedicated "perma-perma-death" servers, where players could not even re-create characters after dying, in contrast to the game's generic "perma-death" servers. Another was "blueprints," which allow players to get a general sense of a house's layout before entering and thus encourage setting up puzzle-based—rather than luck-based—vault defenses.
Rohrer did not, however, want the game to be impossible, so he took the step of forcing players to evade their own traps before the houses would be accessible to others.
The game has been placed in the
public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work
A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...
and is hosted on
SourceForge
SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirrorin ...
.
Upon release, the game's 50% discount was scaled back to 25% for one week. It has not gone on sale since, as Rohrer believes that "sales screw your fans" as they discourage buying games one wants during non-sale periods. Following the game's release, Rohrer used $3,000 USD of alpha release earnings to fund a competition in which players could win money, paintings, gift cards, and other prizes by having the highest worth in-game houses. The highest prize awarded was $316 USD.
Reception
''The Castle Doctrine'' received mixed reviews from critics, with a score on review aggregator
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
of 58/100.
Patrick Carlson of
PC Gamer
''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games ma ...
reviewed the game well, responding positively to the game rewarding experimentation and being easy to understand, describing it as thoughtfully designed.
Game Informer
''Game Informer'' (''GI'', most often stylized ''gameinformer'' from the 2010s onward) is an American monthly video game magazine featuring articles, news, strategy, and reviews of video games and associated consoles. It debuted in August 1991 w ...
's Daniel Tack also rated the game well, commenting particularly on its creativity, stating though that he did not think the game was "''deep enough to stay interesting for long.''"
Writing for
Destructoid
''Destructoid'' is a website that was founded as a video game-focused blog in March 2006 by Yanier Gonzalez, a Cuban-American cartoonist and author. Enthusiast Gaming acquired the website in 2017, and sold it to Gamurs Group in 2022.
History
' ...
, Patrick Hancock shared Tack's opinion that the game was a good experience, but said he would find it hard to recommend.
The web-video series ''Extra Credits'' recommended it on one of their "Games you might not have tried" episodes, praising it for challenging the player to examine their beliefs, and commenting that being good at the game itself "requires the same sort of paranoid genius that the game itself is trying to warn against."
Polygon
In geometry, a polygon () is a plane figure that is described by a finite number of straight line segments connected to form a closed ''polygonal chain'' (or ''polygonal circuit''). The bounded plane region, the bounding circuit, or the two toge ...
's Russ Pitts found the game a frustrating exercise, his experience determined by the arbitrary quality of player designed houses, and further obstructed by the harsh consequences of failure. Pitts felt the game valued its message over the player's time and yet found the message hard to take seriously; he would describe the game as the most disturbing he had ever played.
Keza MacDonald, in her review at
IGN
''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa distri ...
, shared these frustrations, finding that tackling player-constructed houses made the game over-reliant on trial and error. She also found it hard to empathize with the small, pixelated characters, leading her to believe that the game failed in "communicating much of a message".
Nick Capozzoli of
GameSpot
''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition ...
also gave the game a largely negative review, criticising the
nihilistic
Nihilism (; ) is a philosophy, or family of views within philosophy, that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as objective truth, knowledge, morality, values, or meaning of life, meaning. The term was pop ...
feel, and saying that it did not bring out the emotions it was aimed to.
References
External links
*
*
The Castle Doctrine' at
SourceForge
SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirrorin ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Castle Doctrine
2014 video games
Indie video games
Linux games
MacOS games
Open-source video games
Roguelike video games
Strategy video games
Video games developed in the United States
Video games set in 1991
Video games set in 1993
Windows games
Public-domain software with source code
Commercial video games with freely available source code