Many Ways to Play

The default Castle Arena match is simple: pick a faction and play one round of up to 30 minutes. But a tug-of-war battle changes a lot when you change what each side gets before it starts. So we built a full system for game modes, then made room for more players per side.

A mode is a recipe

Every mode combines a base, a series length, a time rule and options. The base decides how factions are assigned: each side picks, gets a random one, both get the same random faction (Mirror), or they draft in turns, either once for the whole series or again every round. Two bases are wilder. Ultimate gives each side one random building per slot, drawn from all 14 factions, always with at least one legendary. In Ultimate Draft, each side chooses one of two building packs five times, then one of three perks.

On top of that you can stack options: starting gold, lumber and legendary crystals, a faster or slower income cycle, a lumber cap, different income tax levels, no artillery, no legendaries, no shop, no Rescue, no syncing, faction bans, fog of war and more. Coins drops a 20-gold coin into each side's territory every 40 seconds for the worker to collect; Crazy coins drops ten at a time. Domination grants +50% income that cycle to whoever controls both lanes.

The mode builder

Edit mode opens the builder. On the left are ready-made modes such as Random best of 3, Draft with bans, Coin party, Blitz, Troops only and Until it falls, plus My modes, where you can save up to 40 of your own. In the middle, the Builder groups every option by section, each with an "i" that explains exactly what it does. The Compendium tab lists all 48 commands with search, filters and a pixel icon for each. On the right, the mode is summarized in plain sentences next to its mode string, a short code like -rr3-nt-cc that you can edit, copy and share.

Drafts and series

When a round needs choices, a draft screen opens in the war room before the battle: bans, faction picks or Ultimate Draft packs. Online, each choice has a 30-second timer, and the game picks for whoever runs out of time. During the match, a strip under the HUD shows the series score, domination and coins, and the result screen offers Next round. Draws don't count as points, and surrendering ends the series.

Some rules had to fit how Castle Arena works. Your worker never leaves your own territory, so each side gets its own coins in mirrored spots. Bans always leave at least four factions in play. And everything random in a draft comes from one seed shared by both computers, so online players only exchange their answers.

2v2 and 3v3

The newest piece is Format: 1v1, 2v2 or 3v3, in the battle setup and in the online room. In a team match every player has their own worker, gold, lumber, income, perk, crystals and Rescue. The castle, the territory and the troops on the field belong to the team. Anyone can build anywhere in the team's base, but only the owner controls a building, and a spot an ally has marked stays reserved. Using your Rescue puts a two-second cooldown on your allies' Rescues. War Drums, Marching Pipes and Fury boost the whole team but don't stack between allies. If time runs out, the team with the most Rescues left wins, with combined income as the tiebreaker.

Against the computer, your allies and the extra enemies are AIs, and each one claims its own strip of the base. Online, the two players lead opposite sides, and AIs fill the remaining seats on both computers.

Should a 3v3 castle be three times as tough? We measured it. Matches lasted 10.1 minutes in 1v1, 12.1 in 2v2 and 13.0 in 3v3, and multiplying the castle's health by the number of players changed that by only about 0.3 minutes. Matches are decided when the defenses fall, not by the castle's health bar. So the castle stays the same in every format, while the troop cap per side grows from 90 to 135 to 180. And 1v1 plays exactly as before: we checked that the simulation produces identical results.

What's missing is online play with more than two people. For now, it's you and a friend, plus AI allies.

Update, October 4: not missing anymore. See Eight People, One Battle.

— The Castle Arena team