Considering the pricetag, this game feels like there isn't much effort poured into making it. I've seen plenty of free flash games from newgrounds 17 yrs ago that is better than this...

I sort of have mixed feelings about this game. The graphics are really good, the music is not utterly annoying, the animations are smooth, but...

In this game, there's only a limited horizontal space to move. You have 3 actions: normal attack, special attack which requires a full mana bar, and slide. No jumping. No vertical movement whatsoever. No exploration. No "adventure" (which is literally what you have to choose in the main menu to play the game). There are 3 types of enemy: a flying sort of bug thing, a kind of cultist and a giant flaming skeleton that keeps hacking with a scythe-like weapon. When you kill them, they will give you colored orbs, red for HP, blue for mana and yellow for XP. It's a good system. The thing is, if you stand still close to one of the edges and spam the attack button, you can kill the first two without getting damaged. The giant skeleton will never get close enough to you to reach you, so you just use your special attack on him and he's gone. What you see on the trailer and screenshots is, literally, all you will see. And that's it.

You will get all the achievements in like 5 minutes. I stayed a while after that to see if there was any change. There wasn't. The same enemies just keep coming, wave after wave. You level up and nothing happens. Occasionally, you see a "Great Job" displayed on screen. After 13 waves of the same, I just got bored and came here to write this review.

It's a pity that the really good things about this game are kind of wasted on what it ultimately is. This game has a lot of unexploited potential. With a little more work, it could be turned into a very nice platformer/metroidvania kind of game. I cannot even imagine why someone would pay the full price for this. It almost feels like a demo. A really short one. There are no goals, no changes at all. Pity, indeed.

✅ Eye catching pixel graphics
✅ Nice animations & overlays
✅ Controls are responsive

❌ One single stage
❌ Endless mode only
❌ Three enemies in total
❌ Waves differ only by length
❌ Level ups are meaningless
❌ No score, no ranking, no purpose to play for
❌ No replayability

In short, Castle Reborn falls strongly under the category of "looks good on the outside, but empty on the inside." The game doesn't have any actual content beyond a few minutes of button mashing, after which it devolves into a pointless exercise of how long you can last. Even if you like skill based endurance challenges, there wasn't any quality control done on the product.

How do I know? Here's the trick: Run all the way left, face right, spam Z, and fire X (giant wave) to clear the screen when your blue bar fills. Doing this you are literally unkillable. Enemies cannot spawn from beyond the border, nothing tempts you to turn around, and the hulking executioner can't even reach you with his swipes. Sprinkle on top the complete lack of enemy variety, additional stages, or story, and you have a product that jeers both the player and the store that allows it to be sold.

Too harsh? Sorry, not sorry. The issue is that these bare-minimum effort apps have a very specific footprint, and show up in the same places. Low cost bundles, giveaways for like-follow-subscribe, and grey market vendors selling them for pennies on the dollar. It's a seedy economy that has existed since the end of Greenlight, and continues to fester. Consider the game - and the developer catalog - at risk of removal if Valve ever realizes their mistake.

Achievement Hunters: Use the strategy posted above to complete all achievements in ~5 min.

No one reads the reviews, so I will write that I am gay

you can 100% complete the game in like 2 to 4 minutes lol, this feels more like a demo than a game so the 10 dollar price tag just blows my mind, dont pay full price for this, wait for it to go on sale if you want to try it, but i got it for free so whatever its not bad i guess lol, i would be mad if i paid over 10 dollars for this though lol

ALSO there is no highscore or leaderboard so everything feels pointless, normally this is a thumbs down bad game but again, got it for free so, its just meh, ok, thanks for the free game i guess lol

Meh

After playing Castle Reborn for 15 minutes and effectively completing the entire game within the first 5, I can conclusively say this title is a cashgrab. Its unfortunate as the game looks nice, sounds nice and overall plays nice, which most likely is due to the asset flip style nature of this game.

The gameplay tops out at wave 3 where a large boss enemy is encountered, who is unkillable unless you stand in the corner and spam the magic water attack. The mana bar recharges over time so this could be done infinitely. I made it up to wave 10 before quitting and found no content beyond that point.

The game looks great and really could have been an awesome title however the indecency of these developers is showing through. If I had bought this game through the Steam store for any price, I would be requesting a refund. The developer has the option to flesh out this game and make it into something good, but I would not hold my breath.