Game Review: Castle Wreck (Mobile – Free to Play)

After only a short time playing Castle Wreck the problems within the game become painfully apparent. A lack of detail, longevity and far too many ads. It’s the same old complaint in regards to the current output of the free to play mobile market but we will never get sick of telling you why these games are bad.

The difference with Castle Wreck though is that it shows promise with an addictive concept ruined by mishandling and developer greed.

It’s super simple to play. You control a canon and must blow apart castles. Destroy enough of the castle in question to progress to the next level and so on. You have a limited amount of shots so precision is key.

Aiming and firing is done with just two touches of the screen. The first to line up your shot horizontally and the second to line it up vertically. Once you’ve done that the canon will fire automatically and the camera travels long with the ball until it makes impact.

A solid mass to destroy, it can be very satisfying watching your target crumble but even more satisfying to hit one of the dynamite barrels lying around.

…and that is it. There’s nothing more to Castle Wreck. No extra mode, no bonuses to unlock, not even different canon skins. Which might sound stupid but is the sort of thing you would expect to find in a free to play mobile game.

The lack of content is troubling but the lack of variety is the real problem. There are only a handful of different castle types with only the canon position changing location. It also has a steep difficulty curve, where you’ll suddenly hit a level that you can’t progress past even if it seems like you’ve decimated the castle.

Now we’re not going to suggest that the developer did this on purpose but we’ve gotten stuck at a level for absolute ages then later found ourselves beating it easily even though we did absolutely nothing different. Is it coincidence that the majority of ads pop up after you’ve failed a level? Whereas you’ll get an ad every 2 attempts when winning, these pop up after every single failed attempt. Interesting…

Of course you can remove ads for the hilarious amount of £2.99 and like always, it’s in no way worth it.