Becastled Review – Charming Real-Time Strategy With Sun & Shadow Sides in the Test

In the Real-Time Strategy Game Becastled, We Build Villages and Castles in a Fantasy Medieval World – Review / Test

In my Becastled review, I introduce you to this RTS Early Access title and test the cute real-time strategy game with castle building, city builder strategy, and sieges. The indie game Becastled entered Early Access on Steam & GOG fresh in 2021. The people of the sun are always attacked during the night by mysterious shadow creatures, and we help them fight off these attacks. For this, we need plenty of resources to build soldiers, towers, and walls.

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This article is available here as text, but also as a YouTube video (German voice-over, many subtitles). This way you can choose how you would like to enjoy it most.

Becastled Review Video

German Voice-Over, many subtitles

Becastled Review – Intro

Hi there, this is the Zap. In this Becastled review, I introduce you to this new medieval building strategy game with castle building and sieges. I’ll tell you how it is played, whether it is fun and at the end, you’ll get a rating from me. But most of all I want to give you all the info, so you can evaluate for yourself if Becastled could be fun for you.

I received a free review sample from developer Mana Potion Studios, but that should have no bearing on my rating, as I always test all games with the thought of how would I feel if I had paid full price.

Becastled – Game Type

In a medieval fantasy world, there are the people of the day creatures who live with the sun, work, and gradually expand their empire by buying plots of land. We collect resources such as wood, food, gold, stones and provide a good mood.

But wherever there is light, there is also shadow. The people of the gloomy night people attack us every night and we urgently need to build defenses and an army of enough soldiers. Thus, the game is divided into a construction phase by day and a combat phase by night.

We use 27 different buildings to build our city from and also to secure it with. To build everything up a little prettier, there are also 10 deco building parts in addition.

With every night that comes, the attacks get stronger. But we must not only keep an eye on building up our military. After all, our inhabitants have a constant need for food and every military unit consumes gold, here called sunstones.

If we cannot meet the needs, inhabitants starve or soldiers desert. Also, there is a mood in the population, and as it gets worse new settlers appear slower, however, if everyone is happy this spawn rate increases sharply.

The attacks happen every night from a different direction, this is indicated with blue flares, therefore we must prepare specifically for them during the day. In order to defend our settlement, we build palisades and towers first from wood, later also from stone.

Then we can put archers on the towers and walls, send swordsmen, lance warriors, and knights through the gate outside the wall. Later, additional trebuchets and ballista are built on some towers. Also, the attackers of the night attack us with foot troops, ranged fighters, and siege equipment, which varies from night to night.

Becastled Gameplay Screenshots InGame

Becastled Gameplay – Tech, Graphics, Sound

Becastled is developed with the Unity engine. This provides a stable base for the game, so crashes did not occur for me. There were minor bugs, where once you could not use a tower if you upgraded it from wood to stone, or after demolishing a building for a day the building site was not released again. In rare cases, soldiers can’t find their way when you assign them a spot on a wall.

The game’s graphics are in a minimalist low-poly graphic style. Nevertheless, Becastled manages to create quite a pretty atmosphere with it, partly due to a clever and handsome calculation of light and shadows.

The soundtrack is also rather minimalistic, the few noises that our inhabitants make while working or fighting are accompanied by a few pieces of music. But at least this sound is quite pleasant to listen to.

Becastled offers good settings menus where you can change graphics quality, key assignments, and switch the game’s language to 28 different languages. The English and German on-screen texts are also completely well translated.

Becastled Test – Opinion and Conclusion

Quite succinctly, Becastled has been fun for me. However, it currently only offers a sandbox mode. You can set the number of days you have to survive to victory, endless mode, or fight to the doom also works. A 15-day map then took me about 2 and a half hours until I was victorious.

Then you can choose between different terrain types, set a combat difficulty in 8 levels, and the number of resources and animals. So the sandbox mode offers a certain amount of replay value. But that’s about it because a campaign doesn’t exist and other game modes are envisioned, but so far also not available.

The game’s mechanics work well for the most part, and it looks quite nice as well. It’s not technically perfect, but it’s absolutely in a playable state. The sandbox mode settings allow you to choose different types of challenges, and the map layout is randomized anyway.

But still, I think, the scope of the game in relation to the price is thus kept a little too thin at the moment. Here’s hoping that the team does not cut the efforts after the release, but integrates more buildings, more variants, and possibly other game types such as multiplayer or a campaign.

The developers talk about adding this and perhaps mod support in the future. However, with an Early Access title, you can’t be sure about that. Therefore, Becastled currently leaves me with one laughing eye and one crying eye. You could say there is a lot of light but also a lot of shadow in Becastled.

Becastled Review – Rating

Becastled is conceptually a successful mix of building and real-time strategy. The indie game went into Early Access on Steam and GOG.com on February 08th, 2021. It currently costs a slim €12.49 or $15 with a 10% launch discount until February 15.

The concept is really good, the gameplay is fun, however, the scope of the game in relation to the price is currently in a rather poor ratio. And so after a few hours, a somewhat disappointing feeling remains.

Taking the above together, I start here with a base score of 85%. For the lack of gameplay, however, I subtract 8% from that again, and for minor bugs, there is another 3% deduction. This brings me to a final rating of 74%. If extensive updates eliminate the bugs and expand the scope, the game has the potential to rise above 80% again.

Outro

Do you like building castles and helping the light people fend off the night people’s attacks? Or is it all too thin and too martial for you? Feel free to write me your opinion below in the comments or on the Community Discord server at https://zapzockt.de/discord

You can find more gaming news, game reviews, and guides at https://zapzockt.de – Likes, subscriptions, sharing, clicking links, etc., well, you know what I’m saying. Have a great day then, stay healthy, ciao ciao, your Zap.

Links and Sources

Becastled Steampage (incl. free download Demo Version)

Becastled at GOG.com

Becastled Discord

Dev Twitter