The Castle Doctrine News

Announcing the preview period for the Dutch auction of one-of-a-kind non-fungible crypto tokens of the pixel paintings from The Castle Doctrine. Only one person can own each painting. View the collection here: https://opensea.io/collection/thecastledoctrine More details here: http://thecastledoctrine.net/crypto.php

"This game will never go on sale."

But, hey look, this game is on sale.

Is nothing sacred?

I've lost my moral compass. I've been besmirched. I've changed. I'm not the game developer that I used to be. I'm not the man you married. I'm not the son you fathered. I'm not the baby that you once suckled to your dewy bosom.

And if that last paragraph wasn't clear enough: I've lost my marbles. I'm off my rocker. I'm not playing with a full deck. The lights are on, but nobody's home. I've flown the coop. I've tweaked the weasel. Yes, you read that correctly:

THESE PRICES ARE INSANE!

Somebody stop me before I change my mind!

But why, Jason, after all these years?

The Castle Doctrine is one of my best games, and it stands the test of time. However, it has become price-prohibitive for anyone to play in recent years.

In my early forays into online multiplayer games, I made a big mistake: I designed games that depended on a critical mass of other people to play. This is borderline suicide for an indie game with a small and sporadic audience. (I rolled that lesson into One Hour One Life, which is perfectly playable even if you're the only person playing.)

The Castle Doctrine isn't actually the worst offender in this department, because interaction with other players is asynchronous. You can design a house, and then come back in a few hours to see what other players have been up to. You can rob other players when they're not home, and the content created by whoever has been playing over the past few days is available to you now, even if they're not actually online right now.

The Castle Doctrine doesn't require a huge critical mass of players to work, but it does require a steady trickle of fresh blood. This new, more-appropriate price will make that possible going forward.

And of course, we all remember the glory days when there were 800 active houses online. How can these slim pickings ever live up to that experience?

The game has actually been improved a bit recently to be more low-player-count-friendly, with "state owned" houses fleshing out the list when things get too sparse. There's always something to do, and you can never run out of houses to explore and rob.

But last I checked, a few living players were still hoarding all the paintings. So someone is still playing, and they're in for a big surprise this week, as the teeming masses come beat down their doors.

This is The Castle Doctrine revival.

See you on my security tapes.

Jason Rohrer
March 2020
Davis, California


PS: the Discord server for the game is here: https://discord.gg/HupVMC9

Since the recent update to the house list, there has been the biggest boom in the player population in almost two years, with 50+ unique players per day for the past few days.

The irony is that we now have so many houses online that the original fix, to pad out the house list, isn't currently needed.

However, its important to understand that without such a backup system to provide content in low population situations, a vicious cycle results that shrinks the population over time. By fixing this problem, a virtuous cycle is created instead. Players that try the game again these days tend to stick around for a while, making the game still even better and more interesting for additional new players that show up later.

A Discord channel has sprung up as well, which you can join through this invite link:

https://discord.gg/HupVMC9

Since the recent update to the house list, there has been the biggest boom in the player population in almost two years, with 50+ unique players per day for the past few days.

The irony is that we now have so many houses online that the original fix, to pad out the house list, isn't currently needed.

However, its important to understand that without such a backup system to provide content in low population situations, a vicious cycle results that shrinks the population over time. By fixing this problem, a virtuous cycle is created instead. Players that try the game again these days tend to stick around for a while, making the game still even better and more interesting for additional new players that show up later.

A Discord channel has sprung up as well, which you can join through this invite link:

https://discord.gg/HupVMC9