Castle Of Alchemists Preview

Home to scholars, engineers, philosophers, and people of science, the titular Castle of Alchemists is an impenetrable structure that will repel any outside force. But now, there’s been an attack from within, and it’s completely the fault of the inhabitants; their desire to find the Philosopher’s Stone led them to dabble in the forbidden arts, opening portals that have unleashed dangerous enemies on the once peaceful halls. To make matters even worse, the castle’s defence system has locked all exits, preventing everyone — friend and foe — from getting out. Defending is your only chance for survival, so get ready to stand your ground.

This is Castle Of Alchemists, a fast-paced tower defence and top-down action game coming to Early Access on Steam very soon. Ahead of its release, I had a chance to try out a brief demo, which features three levels: the Blacksmiths’ wing, Frozen Corner, and Frozen Canals. You’ll play as Bellator di Alchemia, an alchemically enhanced soldier who has been awakened for the sole purpose of defending the castle and its residents. Utilising a variety of traps, towers, smaller boobytraps, and vials, you’ll prevent enemies from breaching more areas of your home.

The tutorial opens in what looks like an alchemy workshop, where two guards are protecting you from incoming enemies while you learn the ins and outs of Bellator’s abilities. Controlling him is quick and smooth, as his movement speed is quite fast and he can easily traverse up and down from heights as well as jump over obstacles and gaps. Combat also has great flow, letting you switch between ranged and melee weapons seamlessly using the Tab key. Get some practise in and help out the guards by hitting foes with your hammer, or experiment with your special cannon ability, which unleashes a powerful burst of damage to a line of enemies in front of you. You’ll find out soon that fighting as Bellator is an important factor of this tower defence game since you get to fight freely alongside your traps and towers while waves of enemies are en route.

Each level starts with setting up your defences. You’ll be allotted a certain amount of resources to place barricades and traps or build towers. Don’t worry if you spend all your resources, they’ll replenish once you survive the wave and you can even enter “sell mode” to gain back some spending power while changing up your defences. There are three options for building towers: a crank gun, ballista, or cannon tower. Only the ballista was available in the demo I tried, and it was definitely a worthwhile purchase, as it pelted enemies with strong bolts from afar. Although you can’t choose where your towers are located, you do have complete freedom when it comes to setting up other defences. You’ll start with spike traps, barricades, and a ceiling dart trap, but you also get access to a furnace trap that blasts out fire and a sprinkle trap that slows enemies down. Maps do have choke points, so make sure to use those to your advantage when you’re getting ready for the attack.

Once I faced the first wave of enemies in the tutorial, I found out Castle Of Alchemists meant it when it described itself as a fast-paced title. I wasn’t expecting the raiders and swordsmen to come in so quickly and in such large numbers. Before playing, I thought I would mostly rely on my traps or the towers to do the hard defending for me, but when I tried that strategy, multiple enemies breezed by my defences and got through the entrance I was guarding. That’s not to say setting up isn’t important — because it is — the game simply adds an extra layer of fun by requiring you to fight constantly, using everything you have at your disposal to kill foes. Bellator can use boobytraps such as a caltrops trap or a fire flask (my personal favourite) during the wave, each of which has its own cooldown, so you’ll have to be strategic about when you use them — and if an enemy is resistant to a status effect, you’ll have to be selective about what you use too. Enemies are tough, but thankfully, your weapons hit hard; I frequently opted for the crossbow, which would allow me to rapidly fire at enemies, taking them down swiftly.

As I progressed through the levels, the game rewarded me with skill points to level up Bellator’s stats, such as his stamina or poise. And I obtained crafting resources to create higher tiers of boobytraps or weapons, making them more effective by expanding their area of effect, increasing damage, or decreasing cooldowns. The crafting system is based on RNG, but you do get to see how likely you are to get various tiers. Maybe you have a 40% chance for a tier two item versus a 20% chance to reach tier four, for example. There also seems to be a hidden chance to craft something unexpected; one time when I was crafting a liquid flask, the game gave me a tier two water flask to wet enemies rather than my usual oil flask that would burn them. I assumed wetting enemies could be used in conjunction with your spike trap, which conducts electricity, as I thought it would be a fun combo to play around with. I decided to put my theory to the test during a run of the Frozen Canals, but I’m sad to say nothing happened — though this might be because the demo is an early build of the game.

Castle Of Alchemists not only plays well, but it also looks great. The beautiful pixel art and smooth animations complement the fast-paced gameplay nicely. While the demo has only three levels, the amount of replayability for those levels alone is impressive, from trying to get a high score on the leaderboard to beating specific challenges the game gives you. I’m excited to see how this title develops in its Early Access journey, and there’s a lot of potential for it to be a strong contender in the tower defence genre. It successfully blends strategy and action in a way that really makes it hard to put down.

Castle Of Alchemists arrives in Steam Early Access on the 17th of May 2023.