The Elder Scrolls: Castles is a colony sim game similar to Fallout Shelter that was released almost out of nowhere. To the point where people have questioned if it was mistakenly released or a shadow drop. While I don’t expect it to have anywhere near the 50 million Android downloads as Fallout Shelter, it currently stands at a small 5,000 after about a month.
This makes me wonder why Bethesda Softworks hasn’t been marketing it. Especially since the current early access has a decent amount of content already. Regardless, The Elder Scrolls: Castles revolves around managing a castle and making decisions while trying not to aggravate your people.
If you end up with a bunch of unhappy residents, they’re bound to assassinate you or others. Fortunately, this doesn’t lead to your castle crumbling and instead shifts the power to your heir. But, I noticed once I got a handle on how everything works, this was no longer a struggle.
With that said, when first starting out, it can be difficult to manage your castle. You’ll need to prioritize your food production so your people don’t starve. While also keeping a steady flow of oil to power the lights. If the lights go out, most workshops will no longer produce items.
The many workshops include the Mill for producing raw materials like wood, a Furnace for iron, a Smithy to craft weapons and armor, among many others. Once you have a decent grasp of your food and oil production, the gameplay loop starts to kick in.
You’ll spend most of your time increasing the efficiency of each workshop while also keeping people happy. For example, you can use the Sewing Table to create unique uniforms for each station. Or you can use the Workshop to create tools like Chisels and Spoons.
This doesn’t stop once all your people have the relevant uniforms and tools. Instead, you’ll need to make more to upgrade them via combining. And eventually, you’ll unlock new resource types for creating better uniforms and tools altogether. Such as shifting from iron tools to steel ones.
This simple gameplay loop can be repetitive even though the journey is more interesting. My favorite part of The Elder Scrolls: Castles easily revolves around making decisions on random events.
Every so often one of the castle residents will approach my leader and present a situation. This can be a complicated one with consequences or simply a gift. However, my favorite decisions are when it’s an ongoing situation. For example, one event had to do with goblins raiding the area.
My first decision was to put together a group of fighters to deal with them. If I recall correctly, this cost gold which can be tough to get when you’re still early in the game. After successfully chasing the goblins away, they moved to another region that then asked for help.
This led to another decision where I had to spend food and gold to help remove the goblins. Although, there are always choices like ignoring the goblins if you can’t afford the necessary resources. Next thing you know, you may have a disaster on your hands.
These interesting events are what make The Elder Scrolls: Castles entertaining while dealing with the sometimes tedious castle management. Especially as you’re eagerly awaiting the next step in an event.
But that’s not all there is to The Elder Scrolls: Castles. When you’re not dealing with resources, efficiency, and decisions, there’s also fighting. This helps break up your repetitive gameplay loop even though it has its’ own grind as well.
Once you have a Smithy, you can produce weapons and armor for your residents. Fortunately, you’ll only need to put together a set for at least three people since that’s the party size. Afterward, you can send them out into the world along linear levels to fight enemies.
The combat isn’t anything too advanced and tends to be hands-off most of the time. However, there are tougher battles and boss fights as you get deeper into the game. But, controlling your fighters can be frustrating. Especially since combat is a little too quick for making adjustments.
I’d love a system that would let me slow down time to control my people more easily. This would help significantly with avoiding deadly enemy AoEs. Until then, I’m stuck getting hit by them most of the time.
That aside, combat is a bit of a grind since you’ll need to advance through a lot of levels to unlock new resources. And your progress is hindered by needing to heal your party after most battles. Fortunately, after playing for almost a month, I’m deep enough in The Elder Scrolls: Castles that I have two groups of fighters.
This helps with grinding through levels even though I still need to constantly produce equipment to keep up with the difficulty. Which brings us back to the micromanaging of castle resources and increasing efficiency all over again.
I definitely think The Elder Scrolls: Castles did a great job of hooking me within the first week. It became a game I could keep open for long sessions and always have something to do. Such as leveling up my dynasty to unlock new building types and all sorts of decisions to rule on.
But, once you get past the honeymoon phase, it falls into the two gameplay loops. Focusing on improving efficiency and working your way through the combat levels. Once you run out of new buildings, the content starts to drop off.
My hope is that the developers continue creating new events as The Elder Scrolls: Castles progresses through early access. Currently, it’s too easy to manage my castle and keep people happy. So the events are where I get the most enjoyment. Especially since these are often where bits of Elder Scrolls lore leak in.
Like the time I inherited money from an unknown family member, but it turned out to be a Kvatch family’s inheritance. For those of you who have played The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, you can probably see where this is going.
Overall, The Elder Scrolls: Castles already shows promise as an enjoyable colony sim. It’s the sort of game I can see myself checking a few times a day to complete tasks and orders. While doing a battle here and there. Check it out on the Google Play Store if you’re interested.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, idle games, roguelikes, and more.