If you love various cleaning, construction, gardening, and other simulators, Castle Flipper by developer Pyramid Games is your unique chance to try out what it’s like to be a medieval royal craftsman. Published by Gaming Factory S.A. and Ultimate Games S.A., the game made its way to Steam in May and so far has received mixed reviews from players.
Let’s check out how it feels to build your own kingdom and customize it till everything is according to your standards! The developers urge players to clean, repair, build and decorate medieval, renaissance, and baroque buildings and castles situated in various locations.
Perhaps you can even become the new king of this once uninhabited land. This is our Castle Flipper Quick-Hit Review.
As the story of the game follows, the protagonist inherits a plot of land from their grandfather and is tasked with turning this wasteland into a powerful kingdom. As a craftsman, you get to carry out various assignments from the townspeople in order to repair your newly acquired property. Prepare to plant trees in your courtyard, place animals in the crofts, build bridges, repair walls and so much more. Renovating a ruined castle is more work than you might think at first!
The game has a pretty nice atmosphere. The graphics are smooth and enjoyable, with no jarring factors besides a bad level of vision in darker places. Additionally, you might run into certain bugs, like weirdly behaving animals – in my game, a deer got stuck in a tree. To my great pity, I was unable to save it.
There are some notes scattered around the various points of different locations. I guess this is the game’s way to somewhat advance its plot? If so, it is difficult to say because it doesn’t really work, and the reason behind those notes is not entirely clear. They are also not present in every location.
The overall gameplay canvas of the title is similar to that of its predecessor, House Flipper, but without the actual flipping part. In the case of Castle Flipper, you get to build everything from scratch. If you have always wanted to express your creativity, you will have a blast! It is one of the stronger sides of the game.
As a craftsman-turned-ruler, you will get to clean up garbage, carry heavy stones and pieces of crumbled walls with your very own hands, clean floors, repair walls, build bridges, create ships, paint surfaces, plant trees, and purchase animals – provided you have the coin. Doing quests and finding hidden treasure chests can help you get rich quickly to advance the construction of your future castle.
When I was building houses in my kingdom, I was annoyed by the fact that the slightly crooked and uneven landscape spoiled the atmosphere of my efforts: either a bush will be clipping through a wall, or blades of grass could be seen through the floor of the bathroom. It is quite a shame that there are no tools to alter the landscape, the way you can in The Sims series.
The soundtrack immerses the player in the atmosphere of the Middle Ages. Sometimes you can imagine being present at some kind of reception with a noble of some kind that decided to thank you for your efforts and show off his possessions in one swoop. At one point, I got so into it that I completely forgot about the quests I was on and just wandered around enjoying the moment.
In general, at the moment the game is a bit half-baked and lacks certain features that would have extended the gameplay significantly. I hope that developers will continue to polish the project to remove certain annoying bugs and consider adding some semblance of story.
Note: the Steam key was provided for the purposes of this review.
Similar to: House Flipper
Pros:
- Variety of tools
- Atmosphere
- Ways to express your creativity
Cons:
- Bugs of various levels of severity
- Repetitive tasks
- Can’t change the landscape
