The Castle Doctrine
Patch notes · News · Live player count
About
The Castle Doctrine is a massively-multiplayer game of burglary and home defense. It's 1991, and things are bad. You're a guy with a house and family. Other players are coming to take what's yours. Build security to stop them. Study their houses, buy tools, and break in to take what's theirs.
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Detailed
The Castle Doctrine is a massively-multiplayer game of burglary and home defense. It's 1991, and things are bad. You're a guy with a house and family. Other players are coming to take what's yours. Build security to stop them. Study their houses, buy tools, and break in to take what's theirs. Everything you do is permanent.I'm Jason Rohrer, and The Castle Doctrine is my 10th game. It's a bit hard to describe, because there's never been anything quite like it before. It's a brutal game in terms of its perma-death and perma-destruction consequences, and it is turn-based, so it's rather Rogue-like. But building such a brutal game in a multiplayer context, with absolutely no cushion between players to stop them from brutalizing each other, is quite strange and new. Everything is real in this game. When you rob someone, you are actually hurting another player in a permanent way by destroying and stealing their hard work. When someone dies in this game, they lose everything and start over. If you devise perplexing security systems, you can perma-death other players when they come to rob you. Watching those security tapes, where someone gets what's coming to them, is an exhilarating experience. On the other hand, you just killed someone and perhaps caused them to lose days of their hard work. And you've been on the other side too, losing everything because of some thoughtless move you made in someone else's house.But there is no randomness in this game, so everything is fair. When you die, it is always your fault. When things get dicey, you can always retreat back out the front door to save your own neck. Of course, human folly will get the better of you.Here's what you get when you buy the game:A lifetime account on the central world server that I'm running.Access to the full game source code (after launching the game on Steam, go here).Everything you need to run your own game server (requires a PHP/MySQL web server, download the source bundle to get started).
Patch Notes & Announcements(9)
MINORCelebrating 13 years and 2,069,877 robberies
The Castle Doctrine first launched off-Steam back in March of 2013. And what do you know? I just tested it on Steam Deck, and it works great on there. Even the wonky Windows-pop-up for server-side acc
MINORFresh Meat
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5579546/d54e9dc46c0bf44ef1936aa8d6a93c568d8d30fe.png "This game will never go on sale." But, hey look, this game is on sale. Is nothing sacred? I've lost my moral compass. I've been
MINOR50+ daily active players
Since the recent update to the house list, there has been the biggest boom in the player population in almost two years, with 50+ unique players per day for the past few days. The irony is that we now
MINOR50+ daily active players
Since the recent update to the house list, there has been the biggest boom in the player population in almost two years, with 50+ unique players per day for the past few days. The irony is that we now
MINORThere are now 100 houses on the list
In low population situations, the available content of the game dwindles. Remaining players are left with very little to do, especially if the available houses are beyond their reach in terms of tool
MINORThere are now 100 houses on the list
In low population situations, the available content of the game dwindles. Remaining players are left with very little to do, especially if the available houses are beyond their reach in terms of tool
MINORImproving the game for low player populations
As you may have noticed, The Castle Doctrine's player population has dwindled since it's peak of 3600 active players back in January of 2014. Over the past week, for example, there have been an averag
MINORImproving the game for low player populations
As you may have noticed, The Castle Doctrine's player population has dwindled since it's peak of 3600 active players back in January of 2014. Over the past week, for example, there have been an averag
MINORLast 10 minutes of the 25% off discount
This is it folks, the last 10 minutes to EVER get The Castle Doctrine at a discount.
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