Becastled Gameplay Preview – RTS Lite

Becastled is a very cute, small scale, real time strategy game about survival. Your main goal is to build up your town and survive the waves of enemies that attack every night.

Like most common real time strategy games, there is an emphasis on having to gather materials to build up your town, fortify its defenses, and raise an army strong enough to make it through the nightly attacks. However, the focus is shifted away from the stressful need to micromanage every unit and element of your town, like one would do in a game such as Starcraft. Instead, the game feels much more like a management sim where you assign tasks to villagers and the main goal is to create a booming economy that is self sustainable.

For example, to build a structure, you simply pick the desired building from the build menu and place it on a sector that you own. A free villager will come and build it automatically for you. You just assign villagers to a building and they automatically complete the task, such as chopping and harvesting wood at a sawmill, mining stone at a quarry, and etc. The game makes managing units very convenient.

This makes the game feels very much like a management sim because as the population grows, you have to maintain food production as well as the general happiness level. This is done by making each sector of the map you own more attractive with decorations or with buildings like the tavern that increase overall mood. The game is very much about creating and balancing a sustainable income of resources in order to expand your base while amassing an army.

The combat is the same way but the lack of being able to micromanage troops effectively makes it feel a bit clunky. Fortunately, the evening combat encounters are not too difficult and you can simply focus on making enough units and placing them at the right locations. Then the fighting will take care of itself.

Overall, Becastled is a very relaxing castle building sim. You have the freedom to focus on building your town the way you want. There is still a little bit of pressure to build enough defenses to survive the night attacks, as they get more difficult each passing day, but not to the point where you feel stressed out playing the game. The graphics and animations are all adorable as well. The combat is probably the weakest point, as it leaves the impression that the units could be more responsive. The management sim element of the game is definitely the strongest part of the game and it is quite an enjoyable experience.