Castle Woodwarf 2 Preview for Steam

My fondest memories of the early internet as a child was playing flash games on Miniclip – particularly those tower / town defense games, charmingly simple but addictively formulaic, that kept me coming back missed save after missed save. Developed by Domo Games, Castle Woodwarf 2 takes this familiar formula and adds charming art, a decent variety of troops and enemy units, and a challenge/difficulty system that allows you to revisit levels at higher difficulties, and unlock boss fights for each one once you’ve bested them on normal. 

The basic premise is simple – there’s a map with different villages and towns that contain increasingly difficult enemies. You have economy units, at first just gatherers, then combat units, like the dwarf warrior. Gatherers harvest resources above ground, while your dwarven defenders hold the line in the tunnels against slimes, bats, goblins, and worse. For the first few missions your options are limited in terms of unit choice, but after the first two you begin to unlock your full repertoire of defenders. All units cost gold, which can be gained from killing enemies, harvesting wood, or passively generated by certain talent tree upgrades. During a battle waves of enemies approach your dwarves to be mowed down by axes, then later arrows and fireballs once you unlock archers and wizards.

After battles you gain stars and gems – stars can be spent on talent trees, of which there are five with five scaling tiers. Unlocking them all is just a matter of time, but I went with the baby dragon egg and resource gathering talents. Gems can be spent on single use items, like bombs, freeze potions, chain explosions, hearts, and gold boosts (there are no microtransactions, thankfully). These boosters aren’t needed when playing on easy, but are definitely necessary when facing larger and more aggressive hordes on normal and hard modes – some boss fights, which are unlocked after beating a level on easy, practically require you to stock up on freezing potions.

Castle Woodwarf 2 is a relatively simple game that, as said, should be instantly familiar to anyone who’s played a tower defense flash game before, but it also has a retro charm and pixelated quality that made it endearingly fun – and surprisingly addictive. Once I’d finished 75% of the campaign on normal I started going back to do challenge modes, tinkering with different builds and unit compositions. There was some frustration in losing to hordes of stone-slinging goblins, but I kept coming back to find a solution (the answer turned out to be lots of frost bombs). This game surprised me – with its charm, its simple enjoyment, and its replayability. For anyone looking for a trip down the tower defense memory lane, or someone with a love for watching 64bit dwarves hack apart goblins, I’d recommend this game. 

Check Out the Castle Woodwarf 2 Trailer:

Castle Woodwarf 2 is available for PC via Steam Early Access.