Sponsored Review – Monster Castle by Sixjoy

Today, we’re taking a brief break from the sweep of history in the World of Darkness to visit a vastly different genre that’s nonetheless near and dear to my pocket: mobile strategy games. Suffice it to say that the story of Duayet and her role in the war with Set is far from over.

Starting up my prerelease build of Sixjoy’s free-to-play Android strategy game Monster Castle, I was greeted by a colorful loading screen – a neat accelerometer-enabled 3D scene that lets us peek over the shoulder of a hero to see a chaotic (if cute) battle. It looks like the monsters are winning, pushing the human forces back from what I suspect is the titular Monster Castle. The lack of a built-in mute button here is a bit of an oversight, but once the patch downloaded, it’s off to the races.

So far, so good.

The fully voiced and animated intro is promising, and the scenario couldn’t be clearer – the “hero” on the loading screen is probably a minion of Sam, the Gaston-like scourge of the monster community. After a nearly automatic tutorial siege, the castle is yours to expand – actually, scratch that. After several nearly automatic tutorial stages, Monster Castle leaves you to your own devices, to upgrade, invade, and defend as you please across a colorful 3D world map that’s pleasantly reminiscent of New Super Mario Bros. Although the story is pretty simple, Monster Castle’s overall presentation is colorful and bouncy. That charm can come at the cost of battery life, so keep that in mind.

This is Sam. He's a jerk.

The core inspiration behind Monster Castle is clear from the moment you upgrade a structure and see a little countdown timer floating on top and a crystal-fueled “Finish Now” button nearby. But unlike the vast majority of Clash of Clans-alikes, Monster Castle trades the usual isometric city-building gameplay for fully 2D castle design. Having played a number of effective reskins of the CoC formula, Monster Castle’s simpler design is a welcome change.

The humans will need more firepower than that to stop me!

Placing crossbows, cannons, and spiked pits reminds me of nothing as much as the Orcs Must Die series. Your castle’s stairs and non-combat structures are easy to move, so creating a path of maximum pain is very straightforward, though I would have appreciated warning that my castle was going to expand when I upgraded my Throne Room. That said, on the defensive side of the coin, Monster Castle’s tower defense heritage is strong.

It's nice to have a hero or two along for the ride.

Unfortunately for prospective conquerors, Monster Castle’s unit AI takes more than a little getting used to. True to genre, your units can’t be controlled once deployed, and will pursue their favorite targets – which are often not the level-ending throne room – at the cost of their lives. Smart PvP opponents design their castles to take advantage of varied target priorities – so even if a castle has empty space to teleport your units into, some of them might run right back down to the first floor to knock over a wine jug or something.

Choose your Hero skills wisely!

You'll find yourself relying on Monster Castle's durable and damaging heroes more often than not – and thankfully, there are a lot of them to choose from. The rare mechanized goblin hero Dr. Watt is given to you early on, but it's pretty easy to beef up your army from there. Daily login bonuses will get you a durable Rock Giant in a matter of days, and it's not difficult to earn the Hero Shards to hire on additional muscle. Although heroes will also follow their electronic hearts during battle, each comes armed with a skill, like Dr. Watt's Explosive Robot, that you can activate when the time is right. True to form, heroes gain experience with every battle (as well as with liberal donations of Gold and Wine), and before long you'll have upgradeable passive abilities like the harvest-enhancing Resource Master at your disposal. There's always room for improvement!

The snippets of lore aren't exactly inspired, but it's nice to see them at all.

Like many contemporary F2P games, Monster Castle starts you off with a healthy helping of premium currency to help you on your way. It’s pretty easy to run through that first batch, but completing quests and daily goals can help refill your Crystal coffers. Social sharing is highly incentivized, with each PVP victory and nugget of lore having a small bonus associated with making a Facebook post of it.

Suffice it to say that there's a lot to do.

As fun as it is to pillage the multiplayer countryside with monster-on-monster conquests, Monster Castle also encourages more organized play in the form of Alliances and the large-scale, multi-stage Conquest War mode. The game is pretty inclusive right off the bat, offering no fewer than 12 non-English localizations in the same download. And with a great variety of national and regional flags, it isn't hard to show local pride and/or language proficiency right next to your character's name. It's a big step up from the guesswork of some mobile titles.

Even at this stage of release, Monster Castle is pretty international.

Between the single player campaign, PvP, guild activities like upgrading Technology, special events, and the need to check in to harvest resources and schedule structure upgrades, there’s never a lack of things to do in Monster Castle. Will I grab premium currency for it? Probably not – I prefer to spend my money, if at all, on content rather than advancement. But Sixjoy’s entry is a strong contender in a crowded field, and worth a look from casual strategists and mobile diehards alike.

Pre-register for Monster Castle on Google Play!