The Castle Doctrine is a creepy and unnerving exploration of the idea of home security and more specifically, the doctrine which it is named after.

You begin with 2000 dollars, a lovely wife, two beautiful children and a wide open empty home. You have a vault that you keep your money in. Everyone else around you lives in similar houses, with lovely wives and beautiful children of their own. They also started with 2000 dollars and a wide open and empty home.

Trouble is, 2000 dollars is not enough for anyone. They're going to come for your money soon enough. And if that's not enough, they'll come for your family and take anything your wife is holding onto for you. You're the man of the house. It's up to you to protect the things that matter to you. So you build a security system.

You dream up a complicated sequence of traps, with dogs, electrified floors, pits, cats, glass, switches, doors and tight mazes. Then you build it. Nobody can get to your vault now.

But you've forgotten that your family needs to be able to get out. You redesign your traps. Now your family can escape easily, but nobody can get to your vault.

But you've fogotten that you need to be able to get to your own vault, or it's all for nothing. You redesign your traps. Now only you know how to get to your vault and your family can escape.

But you've forgotten how much it costs. You have no money. But everyone around you has money. You enter their house. Just to take a look around. You can see their vault. Just there. It's so easy. Until you realize you've just walked into a trap someone else made. You die. So you start again, a new man, a new wife, new children. You redesign your traps. Now nobody can get to your vault but you, your family can escape and you have money.

But you've forgotten how clever your neighbors are. They break into your house while you're not home. They get to your vault, kill your family and leave you with nothing. Nothing. You kill yourself. You start again. A new man, a new wife, new children. New things to protect. You redesign your house.

Your traps have become your house. Your security system is as much a part of you as your own body. And now everyone else is just a sea of people you can rob.

This is The Castle Doctrine.




Emphatically, this is an artistic game. It has very little comrpomise between vision and accesability. There is no tutorial, there is no guide. There is nothing that stops people from building near-impenetrable home security systems. If you die, you die. There is no save game. You can't stash a design for later. For some, this may be a deal-breaker. For some, this might be just what you want.

The Castle Doctrine is eerie in every aspect. The pixelated faces of your wife and children as well as your own make everything seem almost like dolls, things, mere possessions to be guarded at all costs, rather than actual people. The low music that only plays during roberies reminds you that the only wrong-doing in this game comes from other players who are motivated by the cost of their own security to destroy yours. The entire conceptual idea of robbing another player and destroying everything they have worked for is frightening. More frightening is that the game relies on this happening to actually promote any gameplay. The fact that you never actually interact with other players (you can only rob players that aren't currently building their house, whether that means they are offline or out robbing others) adds to the isolationism of the game, where you start to think more and more about yourself and your own paranoid need to secure what you own, regardless of how high the cost may go and regardless of how many lives you need to destroy to make it so.

Superficially, The Castle Doctrine is kind of like a player-generated series of dungeon puzzles. This fact means that many of them are highly unfair and require inside-knowledge to beat conventionally. Fortunately, during a robbery, it doesn't just boil down to guess-work about how to get through a house. You can bring tools along to disarm traps or cut through things. Problem is that this costs money. So you must be thoughtful about your use of these tools.

But if you're buying The Castle Doctrine purely for its superficial reasons, you are not looking at the much more intense aspects of the game. The Castle Doctrine, despite its very minimalist and at times even clunky art style, delivers a huge amount of tension with its permanent death and sometimes even emotional terror as you realize what a monster the game turns you into. Of course, it also offers fascinating social points, from the obvious comments on security and home invasion, but also on less obvious issues, such as the role of the provider and protector as a man, but simultaneously also the threat and murderer to others. It places a huge weight on the shoulder of the player; you need to consider how much you want to protect your wife compared to your vault and you need to decide if you can live with shooting another man's wife, just for the money she's carrying.

Playing the game itself is kind of fascinating. The very same paranoid and crazy attitude that the game sets out to warn against is exactly what you need to play well. But the fact that you have to tap into that is key; it shows that there is only one way to succeed if security becomes a never-ending arms race like this.

The only downfall of the game, up until the point of my review, has been a steadily dropping player-base. But as of the latest updates, this has been remedied by adding in 100 "abandoned" houses: homes where the players left nothing in their vault. Squatters, having taken up residence, have left peculiar sets of items and belongings in the unused vault. Now, they are ripe for any player. Well, except for their security systems, which, despite having been outsmarted once, often still have a kick to them. With this update, a playerbase of roughly 50+ players has returned, which makes the game quite playable, once again.

I heartily recommend this game to anyone who likes puzzles, artistic games or very difficult games. Don't be too intimidated by the price tag; this game is quite playable for a long stretch of time.

EDIT 05/03/2020: The new price reduction has pumped a new set of players into the game. I recommend picking it up even more now! People are actively playing and you can expect some serious robbers and hard nuts at the top to crack, as well as some mid-range players. And at worst, if you don't like the game at all now, the price is much more accessible.