LIKED
Role Playing Games, RPG in short, can be very addictive and enjoyable to play. RPG players have been playing the same game over many years, progressing from one level to the next higher level, from one version of the game to the next available version, and still waiting for the next future version to come out for continuation of their play. Castle Builder is actually such a Role Playing Game, whereby the main aim is to build and complete a castle, as commanded by each King of the region, for the future use of their daughters. Once the castle is completed, the daughter gets married to her chosen Prince, and so ends one chapter. Then you, the castle builder, moves on to the next mission, to build another castle for another daughter. And so the story goes. What is interesting here, is the fact that in building any castle, you need to play a game in order to win cash and building materials to sustain the building work. Without any of these, the castle cannot be completed, and so you become a failure! What? Me, a failure? Oh no...nosirree...not me...never me! By hook or by crook, I'll finish building that castle, and all the other castles too. Hehehe.
The role playing part is straightforward enough to understand, so no need to elaborate on that, but the game part, yes. All wins in the paytable are shown as the actual cash wins, so 5 of the Builder, the Wild symbol, pay 1333x the total bet, or $200 at $0.15 minimum bet size. The highest paying symbol, the Vault, also pays $200 for 5 of them, followed by all other symbols from $10.00 down to $0.10 for 5 of them. What? Just $0.10 for 5-of-a-kind? Yep, it is that blardy low! There aren't any Scatter symbols, Free Spins symbols, nor any Bonus symbols to look out for, not like in any other game, but just symbols of the King's family members, some of their items, and a building materials symbol. So, this Castle Builder game is definitely not the usual slot game that we know of, but a combination of role playing and slot playing, like it or not! Hehehe.
During the slot play, 2 or more building materials symbols appearing consecutively on any payline would build up the castle accordingly. 2 symbols is the Standard, 3 the Bronze, 4 the Silver, and 5 symbols the Gold, each one building up the castle according to its value, and contributing to the final Bonus Reward upon completion of the castle. The more Gold symbols won, the faster the castle build-up and the bigger the Bonus amount. Once the castle is done, 3 suitors would be presented and you pick one of them to be married off to the King's daughter. Each suitor has a hidden low, medium or high win award, but you won't know which is which until you pick one suitor out and see which award you have won. Most of the time, I had ended up with the low and medium win awards, but had also won the high win award a few times too. If you think that choosing the high win suitor would be easy, try playing the game, pick out the Prince, and see what award he would bring. Some of the high win suitors are simply downright ridiculous, but that's for tricking you into NOT picking on them, so you'll get the low and the medium win awards most of the time!
Frankly speaking, I wasn't bothered at all about the slot game itself, because there weren't any Free Spins or Bonus games to look out for, so I just let the game run on autoplay all the time, and watching as each castle gets built up instead. Hmm, watching those castles alone was interesting enough for me, because I've always been fascinated by them, but before I knew it, all my credits had went bust after building just a few castles! Sheesh...I would certainly need lots and lots of credits to complete this game till the end, but I wasn't about to become a failed builder, so I finally finished playing the entire game in the fun mode! I told you I'm never a failure, didn't I? Hahaha.
DISLIKED
Playing Castle Builder was indeed fun for me. I enjoyed it, I enjoyed watching the castles get completed, I loved the beauty of each different castle, and that final Shangri-La Castle was simply built on islets in the clouds! A final totally impossible and improbable castle to build, but in a game, everything becomes possible! What I don't like about this Castle Builder game, is that I just cannot win on it, and probably can never win on it either! Simple as that! Hehehe.