Castle Creeps TD Reviews

i love tower defense games, but this one seems particularly difficult straight out of the gate and soon becomes unplayably hard without purchasing boosts, or buying currency to purchase said boosts. the gold situation is also impossible - it's bizarrely difficult to collect enough gold to unlock upgrades that you need in order to move forward - and that isn't even the "premium" currency! it's understandable to have to be very careful about gem use, but gold should be much easier to find since it's the most basic currency in the game and required for so many things. PLEASE work on the balance of this game so it can actually be entertaining beyond the first couple of levels! as it is, i'll probably be deleting and looking for something else to fill the tower defense void.

EDIT: part of the gold issue results from being unable to earn extra gold by going back and replaying previous levels. you can replay, but the only way to get gold from it is to get more stars than you got before, which is incredibly limited and beyond frustrating if you already have 3-star victories on everything.

On the surface this game is fun, but around level 16 you will notice difficulty spike. This is the first of probably many paywalls. So if you want to progress you either need to grind for absurd amounts of time, or pay real money. So you are more or less required to use the store. Well lets look at that store. $1.99 gets you 100 gems, 100 gems gets you 2 of the mid level loot boxes, 50 each. The premium loot box however costs 200 gems ($4.00) but upon inspection will only give you half of what you get if you just by 4 mid level loot boxes. So right off the bat this system is designed to trick you into wasting your gems. Surely it cant be all bad though, what about special offers? Lets break one down. For $5 i get 175 gems, 12,500 coins, 40 cards for upgrading heroes, in the top right it claims this is a 1,030 gem value (over $20) Doing the math and conversions it is only a little over 600 gems, and that is if you are extremely liberal with the value of coins. In short, you barely save 50 cents on that offer that claims to be over $20 value.... lets just go ahead and call this game what it is, a casino designed to look like a tower defense game

The game itself is fun and challenging. But once you reach about level 80 (which only takes a few days of casual play) you can’t proceed any further. This is because it costs gold to upgrade your towers and heroes and there’s no way to grind for gold. There’s a limited amount of gold per level and once you’ve beat level and earned 3 stars, there’s no way to beat it again to earn more gold. So you’re forced to either buy gold or wait a day and a half for the medium gold chests to become free to open, which sometimes contain gold, and sometimes don’t. And when they do contain gold it’s only about 6,000 worth and by level 80 your towers cost around 8-10k to upgrade and your heroes cost even more. You end up being able to upgrade a tower or a hero about every 3 days. And with 5-6 heroes and 16 towers, upgrading is an impossibly slow process. And if you can’t upgrade your towers and heroes you can’t progress. There’s also a way to earn a medium chest by doing daily challenges. With those you can earn about a chest a day. So that speeds things up a bit. But it still takes way too long to progress without paying to play.

Initially I ranked this game 5 stars and was obsessed with it. Essentially, it was my go to game and the best TD game I had ever played. Generally, I spend a few bucks on games I like and work hard to progress. However, in this game, you hit a wall at around level 70 to 80. At this point you will run out of gold to upgrade your heroes and towers. So is there any way to get more gold? Nope. You will need about 200,000 gold to upgrade your troops. The gold costs $10 for 20k. So you must spend at least $100 or quit the game. I elected to quit. Whatever, I’ll just download another game. As far as working hard to make more gold and develop? Not a chance. Their tournament rewards are garbage, plus it’s insanely hard. You don’t get gold from replaying levels. Free chests may give you 500 while paid chests only give you 5-6,000. Give me a break, what’s the point of playing a game that you can’t progress unless you pay. I deleted the game and you should not bother with it either.

By default you can only earn basic/crappy versions of most of the characters I’ve seen, then there are better versions with unique skins that are purchase only and even then they are locked behind a timer. It’s one thing to have pay exclusive items/units but they way about it in a distasteful way that I find unfriendly to consumers. For example, your starter character is a basic knight with an aoe slam, but then there’s a paid version of him that can breath fire and is better in just about every way; but here’s the thing, this p2w version is only available for the first ~48 hours you play, so not only do they have a lame pay model where you can’t earn anything good but they actually try and pressure you with their little timers. I for one do not support game developers like these and am deleting the game, I’d recommended you not support this game with purchases. If you want games to get better you have to vote with your wallet, it’s the only thing these companies care about, it is no longer about the player experience or customer loyalty.

Love this game. It’s beautiful, smooth, and well-made. The only ads are the ones I choose to watch for extra chests, gold, or gems. Gold drops could happen a little more often, but I’m patient, so it doesn’t really bother me too much. I do, however, have an over abundance of cards I don’t need such as tower/hero cards for those which are already fully upgraded. May I suggest increasing the upgrade levels past 16 so they can be used? Or perhaps some sort of trade-in program towards things I could always use more of like gold, gems, boosts, elixir, reinforcements, etc.?

Also, the gauntlet could be adjusted so that reaching all 15 tiers is more achievable. :)

This game is one of the most fun tower defense games out there. It’s nice to look at, has all the usual elements plus a few extra for progression. I’ve had this game a few years now and have seen the various updates and changes to game mechanics. I stopped playing at one point because the ability to continue required I sink a *ton* of actual money into the game; I’m all for supporting developers who produce good content... but each individual player shouldn’t be making the equivalent to one of your mortgage payments in purchases in order to enjoy the game.

You need to be less greedy and balance the game, give us more coins. I want guaranteed coins in EVERY gem box, I want coins from replaying levels, I want coins to be cheaper to purchase with Gems.

Play to win games can be fun, and mutually beneficial to the developer and player; by implementing an aggressive P2W strategy you have alienated your player base. We will spend $5 here and there, but not $5-20/day.

The new card system is such a blatant money grab that it's a huge put-off. I believe that developers should absolutely get paid for their efforts and I'm certainly not opposed to in-app purchases (or occasionally treating myself by making a hard level a little easier), but this is ridiculous. The prices of the (copious) available upgrades vs. the scarcity of coins and gems is laughable. Pair that with a massive decrease in elixir and reinforcement rewards in chests and it's simply not fun unless you spend money - which I have, embarrassingly more than once. $15 gets you about two upgrades out of the 50 or so you've earned cards for. I'm going to hold off on an uninstall to see if this is rectified in the next update (to the tune of something a little more useful than "we'll up the chance of a few hundred more coins in your daily chests"). It's a shame - this would have definitely been a 4 star for me before the update.

The game could be good, but you must spend money to be able to continue playing and winning, and I hate to see developers put out another game that’s primarily about money. It’s not like Kingdom Rush where choosing to spend money is an icing-on-the-cake type of thing. Here, you must spend money to be any good and have an enjoyable experience. And the levels are very difficult, much more difficult than the towers are capable of handling, even after you spend money. I never feel like my towers are ready to move forward, even after upgrading them. I usually just end up replaying old levels b/c I don’t want to see the game get more difficult. Also, it is SUPER annoying that this game has to download something every time you open it, and you have to wait for it to download. (It’s probably downloading another in-app purchase.)

This game has a lot of potential, but it seems like the devs are most interested in getting you to pay exorbitant amounts of money to buy coins and gems. I understand having people pay money for gems, but there absolutely needs to be a better way of getting coins, seeing as you cannot progress without them and you can be stuck on a level for weeks or longer if you don’t have enough. I’ve even opened 5 knights chests in a row and received no coins whatsoever, but I receive hundreds of cards that I have no use for. If the devs fix the coin problem in this game it might be more entertaining, but I strongly encourage people to get elsewhere for a good TD game unless they want to pay an insane amount of money to progress in this game. Realm defense is a much better game, try that until this game gets fixed (if that ever happens, which I highly doubt).

The game isn’t fun anymore, thanks to gold becoming so scarce that upgrades are unaffordable. I have 5,000+ cards for every tower and character (almost 10k of Eris) but I can’t use the cards to upgrade because I don’t have the gold, and I only upgrade the characters and towers that I use.

The perks are confusing and underpowered. Which creeps are Deepwoods, or Underbelly? And the perks are rarely powerful enough to swing a level that you’re close to beating.

The new double tap to use special ability is dumb. It was hard enough getting the ability to activate with a single tap. Now it’s even harder.

The gauntlets have become too hard. Guess they want me to pay to upgrade my towers or use a ton of elixirs and reinforcements. Guess I’ll just delete CastleCreepsTD instead.

Oh, and app updates disable notifications, so you won’t get notified of free chests, or events like gauntlets when CastleCreepsTD updates until you reopen CastleCreepsTD . You’d think that the devs would want to fix this since those notifications are there to keep us playing, but updates have been disabling notifications for months. Seems like half a year maybe? *shrug* All of this would make you think that they don’t actually want us playing the game. In that case they’ll be happy that I no longer will be.

I like the game - the graphics and the concept are great, but I have to agree with the others - gold is absurdly hard to earn, and stupidly expensive to buy. So first, you spend some money to buy diamonds to upgrade towers and heroes with cards, and then you realize, that you can’t upgrade them without spending 10 times the amount of money to buy gold with the diamonds. So you are stuck with a bunch of cards and no gold. And the game is getting more and more difficult, so I am not even sure how those who do not spend money on games can play it at all.

Developers, please, fix the game. You are selling hero skins that do not work. I’ve already bought 2 of the them for Kayleen - different abilities, and neither one of them works.

Thank you for fixing it so fast!

I enjoyed the game but the latest update, moving towards cards made it less fun. I have played it for a week and came to these conclusions.

You now need to collect cards and money to get the upgrade. The former add complexity, making you strive to get the right card for the upgrade you want. Challenging but not killer. Gold is now very difficult to get. Opening up the middle (Knight chest) yielded 2 gold chest out of 8 attempts. Each gold chest averaging 2500 coins. Why bother completing daily quests if the yield are so low?

The same is true for reinforcement and gems. Drops for reinforcement and gems are at the same rate as gold chest. I now get 2 gems compared to 8 before. You are driving the game toward big spenders.

I have spent money for the occasional gems. Now it isn't worth it. I much rather you charging for the game maybe $9.99 to restore the same drop as before.

They changed the entire upgrading method recently. With the old way I had extra gold and not enough 'resources' to upgrade things. Now I have enough 'points' to upgrade every single level of every tower and every hero several times over and no gold. It is impossibly difficult to come by without spending a lot of cash. The game has reached a point where I can't upgrade towers without gold, but I can't earn any gold without better towers. You can't even grind on older levels to earn anything. I have messaged the developer several times, and they always respond quickly, but it has been to no avail. The old way was a bit more confused, but was much more balanced. Sad, because other than the gold situation it's a five star game all day, but with it unfixed I'd say save yourself the aggravation.

Would you choose to watch a TV series having known that after 2 great seasons and a cliffhanger ending it would get canceled never to be picked up again? This game is just that. After reaching chapter 21 you just get stuck with a ton of upgrade cards for all towers and hero’s but no gold. Unlike all other resources that is available from chests, there is no consistent way to get gold, not by farming or waiting. I went back and got 3 stars in all previous levels and am now completely stuck. Nothing to do but quit. Sure, I can just buy gold for money, but that it just paying 5 bucks a level, not very rewarding.

Going through previous reviews and developer responses, there was a sense that this was to be addressed. However, last update was released over 10 months ago. Seems like devs abandoned this game and, sadly, I am too. Cheers.

This TD is hands-down the best I've ever played. Very well-designed and rewarding, especially in the early levels. However I'm concerned about the developers' tendency toward a pay-to-win system as player levels increase. It's impossible to earn enough gold to sufficiently level up and beat the chapters. I'm not against spending a few dollars on a game, especially one that I like and when I want to support the developers. However, I am determined as a new player not to spend any money until the p2w balance problem gets mitigated. This is overall a fantastic game, one that I will continue playing. I just hope developers will heed our concerns and rebalance the gold system. If you agree, let the devs know in a review of your own.

The game itself is fun for a few days, then you start running into the balancing issue.

I don’t understand how some levels you start with so much elixir and the creep difficulty ramp is smooth, while other levels you start with hardly any elixir and they throw very difficult enemies in the first round. The only way I see to beat these unbalanced levels is to use elixir boosts and reinforcements, forcing you to buy them. You do have a chance at getting these from the free knight chest, but they only open every 1.5 days, and the chance of getting the boost is very low. Either increase chance of receiving the boosts or increase the amount of elixir you receive from using the boost.

I have invested a lot of time into this game and was really enjoying it. The way they changed upgrading towers and heroes is no longer fun. It is too simplified. The biggest gripe I have though is I was getting over 4K gold with every chest and it was still taking weeks to upgrade towers and heroes. Plus there was a pretty high chance of getting gold for replaying missions. Since the update cheats only give 2k gold and replaying missions never gives any. It was always a thrill to work for the hero chest and open it because there was a chance if you watched the advertisement to get 8k gold in one day. Since the update there are so many cards for the hero/knight chest to choose from that you will never get a double gold
Bonus. So sad to see a game I enjoyed ruined.

Grate game but before the update I had more gold than I really needed and could buy chests to try and get resources. After update I now have literally thousands of cards to upgrade characters And towers with no good way to farm gold to pay for the upgrade. You should give at least a basic amount of gold for completing a level so I can farm for gold. at this rate even spending money which I’m beginning to regret doing I’ll never be able to use all the cards I have.
If the gold situation does not change soon I’ll be dropping this game since it’s clearly became a pay to advance game. Or let me cash in some of my cards for gold. Something so I don’t feel gridlocked. Loved the game but am starting to hate it.
5 stars if gold situation improves but 1 star till then.

Very nice TD game. However there is no way to farm the gold you need for upgrading heroes and towers. You are left with opening the free chests every day hoping you get some gold and the gold you get is not much. So you reach a point where you can't progress for weeks while you log in and do whatever quests you can go hope for x chest that gives a bit of gold. The gems from chests are also very few.

Still I give the game 5 stars and hope for a better resource balance in the future.