Castle Woodwarf 2

Review

The Dwarfen City of Woodwarf and its dragon egg are under attack from The Black Knight and his evil minions. Selecting to Play on the main menu screen will take you to the World Map. Here you will find Upgrade, Shop, Settings and Help, A Big Red X and your starting point, Durn Uluhm. Selecting Durn Uluhm will then give you the choice of the game's difficulty (Easy, Normal and Hard) along with choice to play the Campaign and Challenge modes. Challenge mode is only available once you have completed the campaign on that level. You can change the game’s difficulty at any time should you be struggling to get past a level.

Selecting the Campaign will display some information on the current level. Durn Uluhm have Green Slimes which have flooded the caverns below your village. There is also some information on the enemy which is revealed when you hover your cursor over the enemies, indicated in the centre of the screen. This information about the oncoming enemy consists of Health Points, Strength and Speed. Paying attention to which enemy is incoming can help you decide on the types of dwarves you use to protect Woodward and its dragon egg. When you are ready to proceed, clicking on Campaign will take you to the game screen.

On the game screen you will have some help so that you get the gist of how the game plays out. The screen is divided into two sections:  Underground Caverns and Surface. On the top of the screen is a bearded dwarf’s face, and at the side of this is a row of carrots and fish. Just below the rows of carrots and fish it details how many dwarves you currently have on screen as well as how much gold you have.

On the surface there’s a small home base on the left, a body of water on the right (where you’ll do some fishing) and in between is where you’ll grow your resources (carrots, various trees and other foods). You will be required to farm for resources so that you can sustain the dwarves, who will battle underground to protect Woodwarf and the dragon egg, which is found in front of the entrance to Woodwarf.

The entrance and dragon egg are located on the left hand-side of the screen. The health of Woodwarf is also on the left side and is indicated by hearts. The dragon egg also has a health bar above it; should either of these two reach zero, the game is lost. You will also lose the game if you run out of resources and are unable to feed your dwarves, so keep an eye on the resources at the side of the bearded dwarf face. On the right-hand side is where the enemy will appear in the underground cavern. Near where the enemy appears are details on how many waves the current level has and how many enemies are left in the current wave.

To collect resources, you will need to assign a dwarf to collect and farm for them. There are three types of dwarves which you can choose from to do these tasks: Gatherers, Lumberjacks and Fisher dwarves, (costing 5, 6 and 7 gold respectively). Gatherers will run back ‘n forth collecting resources and delivering them to the home base. Once they have been delivered to the tent/hut, you’ll gain some gold which can then be used to add more dwarves, and/or upgrade the growth rate of the resources. Gold can also be used to upgrade your dragon egg into a fully-fledged dragon, which you can move left and right across the screen, breathing fire and helping to protect Woodwarf.

Now you’ve got some resources coming in you will need to add some dwarves to protect the underground cavern. There are three types of dwarves which you can use to fight against the onslaught of the Black Knight’s minions. The dwarves tasked with defending Woodwarf are Tank, Archer and Mage which cost eight, twelve and fifteen gold respectively. To begin with you have a total of only ten dwarves to call upon, which includes those you’ll need to collect resources as well as those in combat, so you must strike a balance between both. It’s no good collecting loads of resources if you’re failing to protect the caverns, and vice versus, if you don’t have enough resources to feed your dwarves then you’re only going to fail in the caverns.

After successfully completing a level you’ll be rewarded with one to three Stars, depending on how well you’ve done. You can use these Stars to upgrade your home base, field maintenance, dragon, dwarves and resources. Each of these categories consists of six levels which you can use to help you as you progress through the levels. You will earn some Gems upon completing a level. These can be used in the Shop where you can buy various special abilities, such as Bomb, Freeze Potions, Gold and Hearts which may just help you while in combat. You can also buy various new resources like Strawberries, Eggplant, Pine and Maple trees, Trout, Redfish and Tuna. Unlocking new resources will help maintain your growing dwarfen army.

There are fifteen levels to complete in a Campaign; completing a campaign in Normal Mode on each level will then unlock Challenge. Completing all fifteen levels will unlock the Endless Mode, where you will need to combat waves of enemies until you fail. After that, you will unlock the last level which is where all the dwarves take a break from fighting, now that you’ve delivered peace, and go for some peaceful fishing.

In the Settings there are options for Music and Sounds with volume sliders, Windowed, Start Over (you can reset the game wiping any previous game played) and Quit.

The game looks good and it plays well.  It’s not very hard to learn but it can become a little frustrating later in the game, but who doesn’t like a little bit of a challenge?! There are only fifteen levels in the campaign, so it’s quite short; I would have liked some more levels. However, I have enjoyed playing Castle Woodward 2.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!