Crashing Castles!

Each knight has their own type of magical ability (green uses poison gas, blue uses ice, red uses lightning and orange uses fire) with the unlockable characters (24 of them if you can believe it) also having unique spells of their own.

Players level up their characters via a very simple experience points system where points are gained for each individual attack as opposed to counting kills, a much fairer system in my opinion as it prevents kill stealing and makes players work for their levels.

Upon exiting a stage players then get to choose one of four attributes to place their points in (strength, magic, defence or speed) and believe me when I say this game punishes stat bunnies who focus all their points in one attribute as opposed to balancing their skill sets.

Animal orbs are both adorable and useful miniaturised collectables which follow players around granting them all manner of abilities. Some alter attributes (snail increases defence at the cost of some speed), some enhance game mechanics (giraffe boosts experience gained whilst pig increases the amount of health gained from food items) and there are even animals that grant certain advantages on the battlefield (seahorse prevents characters slowing down in shallow water whilst the bat latches onto random enemies and bites into their skull.)

Items include bows and boomerangs for long range combat, potions and food items for replenishing the health bar and sandwiches that increase your characters size and strength Incredible Hulk style for a limited time allowing you to pummel larger enemies or break down bulky doors.

The single player mode is quite satisfying with some original humour and addictive combat but the game truly shines in multi player mode. I’ve yet to try a full on four player game but I’ve seen them on Youtube and they do look quite hectic.

With a good supply of unlockables, plenty of replayability and a handful of minigames to go alongside everything else Castle Crashers is a great example of what happens when gamers make games. If you haven’t played it yet I cannot recommend this title enough, it’s worth every penny and apart from a couple of mildly irritating glitchy moments (solved by exiting and re-entering a level) I don’t have a bad word to say about it.