Battle of Castles

Conquer the map, castle by castle.

Real-time multiplayer strategy. Free, in your browser.

Play now

No account, no download: your match starts in seconds.

Try it without leaving the page

Instant play

The game runs right here

Not a trailer, not a mock-up: the real game, today's build, loads in the frame below. One click and your first match begins.

A moment from a match

No account and no download: your match starts in seconds.

Your castles Your opponent Neutral castles to take Reinforcements and captures

How it works

Four moves, a thousand matches

You start with one castle. You finish with the whole map, or with nothing.

Order the assault

Point at a road: your castle sends half its garrison down it, every second, until you call the order off.

Hold your roads

A wall blocks the road and stops arrows, a tower cuts down the troops that march into it, a catapult pounds the castle across the way.

Grow stronger

Your castles produce experience, and the statues you raise inside them produce more. Every level unlocks a skill, up to the super attack.

Spend at the right moment

Mana fills on its own and buys defences or one decisive blow. It is all a matter of timing.

A Battle of Castles match in progress: castles linked by roads, a column of soldiers on the march, walls, towers and catapults

Getting started

Understood in 30 seconds,
mastered in 30 matches

  1. 1

    GrowEvery castle regrows its garrison. That number is your strength.

  2. 2

    TakeSend your troops at a neutral castle and its silhouette turns your colour.

  3. 3

    HoldWalls, towers and catapults guard your roads while you attack elsewhere.

  4. 4

    WinWipe out your opponent, or hold the most castles when time runs out.

Start a match

The reward

Six castles,
and only one comes free

Every match pays gold, won or lost. It buys nothing but castles: a marble citadel, a palace of the dunes, a fortress of volcanic glass, a spire of ice, a thousand-year oak.

Decoration, and nothing else: no castle you buy hits harder than the one you started with. Your opponents will see it, in their own colours.

Earn your first gold

The Battle of Castles shop: six castles, from the original stone keep to the tree fortress
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How long a match lasts
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Players on the same map
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The game server's tick rate
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To play, today and tomorrow

Under the hood

Hand-made, down to the engine

No off-the-shelf engine on the server side: the real-time core was written for this game, and it holds the map to the millisecond.

Game server in Rust

A 25 Hz physics loop, logic at 1 Hz, state entirely in memory: not a single database query during a match.

Godot client in WebAssembly

The game is compiled for the browser: nothing to install, nothing to update, the same match on desktop and on mobile.

Binary protocol

WebSocket and MessagePack: about one kilobyte per second per player, for a match that never stutters.

In-house art direction

Every castle, wall and tower was painted, then declined in four team colours, with an automated silhouette check.

The drawbridge is down.

A match is waiting: nine minutes, one opponent, a map to take.

Play for free