Publisher: Fireside Games
Designer: Justin De Witt
Artists: Justin De Witt, Chad Hoverter, and Tad Lambert
Year: 2009
Players: 1-6
Ages: 10+
Playing Time: 60 Minutes
Genre: Family friendly cooperative tower defense game
MSRP: $35.00
Blood covered the battlements. “That one was too close”, sighed Robert as he sheathed his sword. The troll had almost torn a hole in the wall and only a lucky strike through one of the narrow slits had stopped the attack. A boy, not much older than his own son, came running up.
“Sir Robert, you must come quickly! The Orc Warlord has broken through the northwest wall and is rampaging through the castle! It is approaching the tower where your wife and son are hidden!” He doubled over and gasped for breath with his hands on his knees.
“Where is my father?” The knight demanded, drawing his sword once more.
“He is at the south wall facing a goblin horde that has sprung out of the forest there!” he panted.
Robert was already sprinting toward the northwest tower, to his wife and son. “Will this night ever end?” he thought, “How many can there possibly be?”
He shouted back behind himself and toward the boy, “Tell the servants it is time to arm themselves, and send some of them to help my father. The rest send to me. We need more men, or we will all be dead by morning!” His voice came back echoing off of the stone walls. Sir Robert himself had already disappeared around the corner.
The boy straightened and stared after the knight in dismay, “But I am only a stable boy”, he whispered to the cold walls. A dull pounding began on the wall next to him and he set off for the servant’s quarters at a dead run.
To win in Castle Panic, you have to survive with at least one tower still standing and defeat every monster until the pile of monster tokens is empty.
To set up, you place the six tower stand-ups around the center of the board. Beyond this you place the six wall stand-ups. Lines emanate from the center of the board all the way to near the edge forming six separate areas. These areas are split into several zones, the Forest, the Archer zone, the Knight zone, and the Swordsman zone. Once a monster gets to the swordsman zone, on its next move it will knock down one of your walls. Then it will knock down one of your towers, and then rotate around destroying tower after tower until the castle is in ruins and the players lose. So, you want to stop the monsters as soon as you can.
The players are dealt a certain number of cards depending upon the number of players, and the monster tokens are placed face down in a pile next to the board after placing six starter monsters on the board in the Archer ring.
The only way to hurt the monsters is by playing a card that will do damage to them. The monsters all have from one to three hit points, and you rotate the tokens to show how much each monster has left. The cards are designed to do one point of damage in one zone and one area. There are three areas of red, green, and blue. The way it works is if there is a monster in a green area in the archer circle, then you need a green archer card to do a point of damage to that monster.
Each turn you draw up to the max cards you are allowed, then you can discard one card and draw a new one, then you can trade one card with another player, then you play all of the cards that you can, then you move all of 
If you allow a monster to get close enough to hit a wall, then that wall is destroyed. Luckily the monster also takes a point of damage. If the monster lives then it will destroy one of the inner towers on its next move. Walls can be rebuilt on occasion, but towers cannot. Finally, if the monster is still alive, it will destroy a tower each turn as it moves clockwise around the center of the board. It is important to try to prevent the monster from getting to this point because there are very few cards that can damage a monster once it is inside the walls. In fact, there is one card that can kill it, one card that can drive it back to the forest and one card that can freeze it in place for one turn.
You can use a combination of a brick card and a mortar card to rebuild a single wall. There are several cards that can affect a monster in any color, and several that allow you to draw additional cards. With all of this, it may seem like it might be easy to keep the monsters back, but it isn’t.
The monster tokens are not all monster tokens. Some of them cause the monsters to move an additional zone, or move to a different color, or cause players to discard a card(s), and then there are the boss monsters.
The Goblin King brings three additional monsters with him when he emerges. The Orc Warlord causes all monsters that are in the same color as him to move one ring closer to the center. The Troll Mage causes ALL monsters to move one ring closer to the center, and the Healer causes all monsters to heal one point of damage when he appears.
The co-op aspect of the game is crucial. You can only trade one card with another player on your turn, but this card is crucial to plan for and the players must really work together to plan the best strategy for stopping the ever advancing monsters. It is not a complicated strategy to plan. If you have a card that will help a player stop a monster, then you trade it to them. They can give you a card in return that might be useful on your turn.
Every time that you kill a monster, you get to keep the token. At the end of the game, if the players won, you can add up all of the hit points on your monster tokens to find out who the Master Slayer (winner) is.
There are two variant versions included in the rules too. In the full Co-op version, you do not keep monster trophies, and there is no master slayer. You either all win or all lose and that’s it. In the Overlord version, one player actually controls the monsters and works to defeat the other players. There are some excellent rules for the monster player to be effective. Additionally, there are solitaire rules if you would like to learn how to play before teaching others, or if you are just looking for a challenge because the solitaire game isn’t easy.
Finally, there are some optional rules to make the game easier or more difficult, or even just to add some new challenges to the game.
Overall Castle Panic is a fun time and makes a great family game. It can be played in an hour and could easily be taught to those 8 and up. I thought the rules were very well done, and they provided many examples to clear up any questions.
An expansion for Castle Panic, The Wizard’s Tower, has just been released and we’ll have a review of that up soon too.
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