Castle Squads

Want the assets? 
https://thecrudeforge.itch.io/samurai

Build your realm. Defend your castle.

Castle Squads is a fast-paced, single-player conquest game inspired by feudal Japan. Command crowds of katana-wielding samurai across an ink-painted landscape of castles, villages, rivers and bridges. Expand for income, recruit fresh squads and hold your ground as rival-clan attacks grow stronger.

Development preview: made for Slapjam AI, with the theme Castle.

Conquer and survive

• Recruit squads of 24 soldiers for 25 gold.
• Capture villages to grow your income and army.
• Watch soldiers break formation for combat and gain experience through ten ranks.
• Explore a continuous realm, cross rivers at bridges and jump to offscreen battles.
• Defend your castle against escalating raids. Conquer the enemy castle, or capture all five villages and defeat the final assault, to win.
• Conquer all 3 enemy castles.

Controls

Designed for portrait play with touch or mouse.

• Explore: drag to pan; pinch or use the mouse wheel to zoom.
• Command: tap dry land to place a command circle.
• Send squads: hold the circle’s + side. Each half-second sends another available squad.
• Recall squads: hold the − side. Hold X to remove the circle and recall its squads.
• Navigation: use the castle arrow to return home and the battle indicator to jump to fighting.
• Options: toggle music and effects independently. QUIT returns to the main menu.

Four illustrated tutorial pages introduce the controls. Progress resets when you restart or refresh.

Ink, steel and music

Aged-paper landscapes, ink-wash samurai and woodblock-inspired interfaces frame the battles. Peaceful and combat music change with the action.

Content note: stylised blood effects and fallen soldiers.

Credits & tools

TheCrudeForge / Niels: concept, direction, asset selection and playtesting.
GDevelop: game engine.
OpenAI Codex / ChatGPT: AI-assisted programming, planning, text and asset preparation.
OpenAI ImageGen: original AI-generated artwork, with editing and compositing.
PixelLab: sprite animations finalized using PixelLab; original artwork was AI-assisted illustration.
Mureka: AI-generated music, prompted and selected by TheCrudeForge.

Music: 暁の城 — v33 menu theme; 影武者の陣 — earlier main theme; 霧の帰路 — peaceful gameplay; 墨旗疾風 — combat.

Freesound resources:

• Katana sword.wav — crawfordjohnb@bellsouth.net, CC0; edited into six swing variants.
• Hit Impact Sword — CogFireStudios, CC0.
• Imperius - Spear Whoosh.wav — SoundFlakes, CC BY 4.0; source audio unchanged, playback volume adjusted.
• Bow Release (Bow and Arrow) and Arrow Impact 1 — Ali_6868, CC0.

The current katana gameplay uses the sword swings and impact; spear and bow resources are retained in the project credits.

Selected game typeface: Grenze by Omnibus-Type (Google Fonts), SIL Open Font License 1.1 (Latin alphabet). The in-game font update is in progress.