Castle Vox Impressions - Conquer The World

Castle Vox is an indie strategy game from SillySoft. It’s a take on the Axis & Allies/Risk style of gameplay/combat mechanic. You recruit units from your castle and move them into enemy territory. If you have a bigger army than your enemy, then you grab that territory. It’s still very simple at its core but with some added depth that isn’t going to make you blow your brain out.



In Castle Vox, you have access to pawns(who are your footmen) and knights. Your pawns can only move to one adjacent region. Your knights can move into two regions adjacent to yours. Obviously the knights cost more but can move to the fronts much faster. Since combat is a game of numerical superiority, you’d often have to use your knights and pawns strategically. You will never win if you spam just knights against an opponent who knows what he’s doing(because knights cost a lot more and you’ll never have as much as them as a proper footmen army).

Control choke points to hold off multiple fronts

Unless of course, you’ve accumulated a large territory and a gold mine and can afford to recruit a lot more knights per turn. Castle Vox also has regions that earn you different number of resources. This leads to a more tactical game as you’ll need to evaluate the threats of enemy regions and their attractiveness(in terms of resources generation or strategic location). 

If you’ve got yourself a large territory, then you’ll have to worry about an extended frontline and spread your forces thin to protect your borders. Except if the map had chokepoints in them(like bridges etc). Castle Vox is all about its maps and special rules that the map maker defines(since combat is simplified).

Different regions generate different number of resources. Think before going for a region.

Dominating a game means understanding the lay of the map, its bonuses and chokepoints and using it to your advantage. It is possible to use speed and rush your knights to capture enemy regions before he is able to muster a sizable force, but you’ll need to bring in reinforcements soon since your knights will be quickly outnumbered by enemy pawns.

The online map manager allows you to download a tonne of user made maps

Which gets to my next point, the map editor. Castle Vox is actually an Axis & Allies type game engine more than an actual game. It’s a platform on itself. Users can make their own maps and upload them. Maps can get rated and you can browse through user made maps in the in game map browser. It’s not just the usual medieval theme stuff but a whole host of different scenarios. World War II, American Civil War, The New World and just a wide range of historical wars.

There's a bunch of different scenarios. If you think of it, it probably already exists.

If playing against the AI(which is quite formidable) gets tiring, Castle Vox offers online multiplayer that plays out over SillySofts own dedicated servers. A turn could take an entire day, so you’ll be playing a game for days on ends. It reminds me much of Neptune’s Pride as with human players, diplomacy comes into play. You can wheel and deal with fellow humans(you can’t do that with the AI) and the game takes on a whole new social dimension.

Castle Vox has a lot of content to offer. With its map editor and long term updates, you will be able to find something new to tickle your fancy for a long time. Maybe you fancy a Zulu war scenarios, or a Mesoamerican one. I bet you probably can already find these in the online map browser. You can download the demo and play the scenarios that come with it for free, but if you want all the content and online play, you’ll have to pay up. Try it here.