Building Your Own Kingdom

If the logistics of being one’s own contractor have been known to break up a marriage, imagine what it could do to a medieval king (or queen) and his (or her) kingdom.

Interplay’s new simulation “Castles” isn’t really about relationships, but it is a kind of “Money Pit” of the 13th Century: designing castles, hiring workers, feeding them, keeping the nobles happy, not offending the church, plotting military campaigns, conquering new lands and finding the renegade who is raiding your forests and championing the poor.

Sound complicated? Not really. It’s actually a lot of fun.

Designed with multiple levels of play, the game can run from one hour to several days. A design menu and layout screen provide the area for building the castle. Once it’s laid out, an additional menu is used to hire workers to build the castle. Workers are assigned as they are hired and the walls start growing.

The graphics detail achieved in the main screen makes it fascinating just to take a break and watch the builders in action.

But like any good monarch, you’d best not rest too long unless you’ve hired enough soldiers to defend you from the crazy, suicidal Celts determined to expel you from their lands. (They can play havoc on an unfinished, undefended castle.)

And if you are not busy fighting the enemy, you must be counting your treasury, taxing your peasants and stockpiling food to last through the winter.

While you might be more than ready to turn off the music after the first campaign, playing a few times on the lower levels will easily train you with the skills to stage a major building campaign.

Just think of the monarchs the world would have had with this in-house training program.

Castles

Rating: ****

IBM and compatibles, Tandy; 256-color VGA graphics recommended; mouse recommended. List Price: $59.95.

Computer games are rated on a five-star system, from one star for poor to five for excellent.