The Castle Doctrine

The Castle Doctrine: 2D Home Defense Strategy Game

Discover the ultimate home defense strategy game, where you build traps and constructs to protect your family and belongings from intruders, while infiltrating others' homes in this immersive 2D experience.

What is The Castle Doctrine?

The Castle Doctrine is a 2D home defense strategy video game developed by Jason Rohrer. The goal of the game is to build an impenetrable fortress to protect your valuables and family while also attempting to rob other players' homes.

At the start of the game, you are given a small suburban house and a family to protect. You must strategically place traps, weapons, and other defensive constructs in your home to stop intruders from entering. However, everything in your home is vulnerable to theft as well, including the lives of your family members.

To earn money for better defenses, you can choose to invade one of the other houses shown on your screen. This is always a deadly gamble, as you'll encounter whatever lethal traps the homeowner has laid for you. If you succeed, you can steal money, items or even family members from the house. But if you fail, you will lose one of your own family members in return.

The core gameplay loop has you balancing risk vs reward as both home defender and home invader. Resources are scarce, so you must plan your defenses and heists carefully. With paranoid attention to detail, you can try to create an unconquerable stronghold. Or perhaps leave an obvious weakness as bait for overconfident thieves...

With its retro-minimalist pixel art style yet extremely dark themes, The Castle Doctrine aims to provoke thoughts on home security, Skeptical design, and the value of human life. It's a tense, strategic experience where every tile placement matters, and death is permanent.

The Castle Doctrine Features

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