Retro-Pixel Castles [official site] is a game I’d been meaning to play for a long time. It’s still moving through Early Access, with regular and meaty updates, and is often described as one of those fabled ‘Dwarf Fortress with a neater interface” games, a select group in which Rimworld is the undisputed master (disputes to take place in the comments!). I fired Castles up this morning, having spotted that it’s 50% off in the Steam sale right now, available for £3.49 until July 4th. It’s more like the Settlers as a strategy roguelike than a sibling of Dwarf Fortress, and I can see myself spending a lot of time with it.

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When I was but a boy, I used to draw little top-down worlds on paper and then systematically destroy them with imagined earthquakes and lots of eraser shavings. Now that I am a man, all hair and forgotten hope and sagging flesh, the nearest I get to those innocent joys is turtling up in strategy games and hoping the bigger boys – I mean, men – don’t attack. Perhaps Retro-Pixel Castles will serve me better. It has recently launched in Steam Early Access and it’s a “roguelike village sim”, with a top-down pixel engine smart enough to render shadows, particle effects and nostalgic feelings about my childhood.

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