The Castle Doctrine
A roguelike about home invasion and vault defense.
The Castle Doctrine is a 2014 strategy video game by Jason Rohrer that pits players against each other in home invasion and defense. Set in the early 1990s, it tasks players with protecting a vault of money while raiding others' houses. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux via Steam and is also available as public domain software on SourceForge.
Quick Facts
- Developer
- Jason Rohrer
- Platforms
- Microsoft Windows
- OS X
- Linux
- Released
- January 29, 2014
- Genre
- Strategy, roguelike
- Modes
- Massively multiplayer
Facts from the source article.
Gameplay
The Castle Doctrine blends puzzle, strategy, stealth, and roguelike elements in a 2D perspective. The player maintains a vault of money in their house, which other players can attempt to rob; the player can also invade others' houses, selecting targets from a list that shows a pseudonym, vault cash, attempted robberies, and deaths. All deaths are permanent, forcing the player to start a new character. Defenses include walls, guard dogs, electrified floors, bottomless pits, and guns for family members. The game does not penalize the player for family members being killed; protecting the money is the emphasized goal. The player begins with $2,000 and steals more to purchase additional defenses. A house is inaccessible while its owner is retooling it. When invading, the player can smash windows, dismantle walls, short-circuit machines, drug dogs with tainted meat, and kill armed residents. Reaching a vault is always possible with enough skill, as the game forces players to escape their own traps before others can access them; being caught in one's own traps results in permadeath.
Development
Jason Rohrer drew inspiration from his childhood fear of his house being burgled and his adult sense of responsibility for protecting his family. The game's central theme is the castle doctrine and gun rights, created partly as an artistic statement on defending one's family through violence. Rohrer wanted the game to make players feel violated and protective, while also feeling hypocritical for invading others' homes, which he considered an elegant idea. He described the game as pre-apocalyptic, avoiding a post-apocalyptic caricature. The aesthetics were designed to be clean and functional, with no non-essential decoration; Rohrer was unsympathetic to players wanting to decorate non-functionally, noting the game is not FarmVille. Minecraft influenced the game, as it involves similar themes of protecting creations from other players. Rohrer initially scrapped the idea of family members due to complexity, but after a dream he found a way to implement them to further the game's moral dimension.
Release
The Castle Doctrine was first released as a paid alpha at half price from March 2013 until its official release on January 29, 2014. During beta testing, updates increased difficulty, including dedicated perma-perma-death servers where players could not recreate characters after dying, and blueprints that gave a general sense of a house's layout to encourage puzzle-based defenses. Rohrer forced players to evade their own traps before houses became accessible to others to prevent the game from being impossible. The game is public domain and hosted on SourceForge. After release, the 50% discount was reduced to 25% for one week; the game has not gone on sale since, as Rohrer believes sales discourage buying during non-sale periods. Rohrer used $3,000 of alpha earnings to fund a competition with prizes including money, paintings, and gift cards for the highest worth in-game houses; the top prize was $316.
Reception
The Castle Doctrine received mixed reviews, with a Metacritic score of 58/100. Patrick Carlson of PC Gamer praised the game for rewarding experimentation and being easy to understand, calling it thoughtfully designed. Daniel Tack of Game Informer commended its creativity but felt it was not deep enough to stay interesting for long. Patrick Hancock of Destructoid agreed it was a good experience but hard to recommend. The web series Extra Credits recommended it for challenging players to examine their beliefs, noting that being good at the game requires the paranoid genius it warns against. Russ Pitts of Polygon found it frustrating, with his experience determined by arbitrary player-designed houses and harsh failure consequences; he described it as the most disturbing game he had played. Keza MacDonald of IGN shared these frustrations, finding the game over-reliant on trial and error and failing to communicate its message due to the small pixelated characters. Nick Capozzoli of GameSpot criticized the nihilistic feel, saying it did not evoke the intended emotions.
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