Game Review: Castle Panic

By Andrew Knaack
October 30, 2009

Designer: Justin De Witt
Publisher: Fireside Games
Players: 1-6
Ages: 10+
Playing Time: 60 minutes
Rules Language: English
Price: $35
Links:

Version played: Comped review copy
Times played: Six, once solitaire, once with 2 players, twice with 4 players, twice with 6 players.

With the sudden spurt of cooperative board games, it is no wonder they are under scrutiny. The popularity of the titles creating this surge – Shadows Over Camelot, Pandemic, Ghost Stories – could lead to an early grave for the genre without serious innovation, particularly since many argue that the games lack competitiveness or that one player can play for the whole field.  Castle Panic tries to bring a new competitive/cooperative feel to the genre, while being simple enough to introduce newcomers to the game.

Castle Panic is a simple cooperative-ish game where players work together on a team to protect their six starting castles from attacking monsters and bosses. The game uses a very simple, card-driven battle system where each attack card hits monsters on certain parts of the board. Players play with their hand face up and can trade designated amounts of cards each round. If any of the original six castles remain at the end, the players have won.

What sets Castle Panic apart from other cooperative games is the idea of the “Master Slayer” – the title for the individual who has collected the most points by delivering the final blows to the attacking monsters if the players’ team wins. The promise of this accolade encourages players to act in their own interests instead of letting one player run the show. If players play with the goal of becoming the Master Slayer, the game takes on more of a Cutthroat Caverns feel in which players must work together for anyone to win, but there is always paranoia as to whether people are out to help just themselves.

The inclusion of the Master Slayer removes the game play from being purely cooperative, and you can remove the Master Slayer goal from the game, if you wish. Do so, however, and it seems as though you would have to have miserable luck to lose in the base game. The rules provide ways to make the game easier or harder, and you’ll need them, especially since the game gets increasingly easier the more players you have due to having more cards in play and more to trade. Accordingly, the challenge was largest when I played solitaire. I’m not a fan of solitaire board games though, and Castle Panic did not change my opinion of this type of design. I felt as though I was merely pushing pieces around the board with none of the interaction that makes cooperative games fun. The other criticism of removing the Master Slayer is that the game does then feel as though one player could play for everyone.

This simple change also makes the game noticeably harder because the overlord player chooses the position of the monsters, thereby allowing him to attack weak points. (In the base game, the monsters are placed around the castle by dice roll.) The overlord does not have many options or really even tough choices, but the constant back-and-forth keeps the overlord well entertained.

One of the best things about Castle Panic is the ability to play it straight out of the box. Tokens are pre-punched and rules are simple to follow with guides on the board and order of play cards for each player. The components are of a very high quality, except for the cards. It perplexes me why the cards are so flimsy when everything else is so nice, but that’s a minor gripe in an otherwise fantastic setup.

Overall Castle Panic is a well thought out game, with various levels of complexity making it perfect for those new to the cooperative genre. It may not be the gamers’ game of the year, but with the Overlord style of play and ways to vary to the difficulty, there is enough substance to keep them well entertained.

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