Hustle Castle

Game overview

Hustle Castle is a free to play idle-management RPG that's 2D in nature, taking place in a fantasy medieval setting. Players must build their castle up by constructing and upgrading rooms, each offering progression purposes like food, gold and army training. Dwellers are how players will progress, as these little settlers can be trained and armed, and then sent out on missions in the PvE campaign to bring back all important loot. The game's simple and addictive idle-sim management gameplay will keep you hooked on either the PC or mobile phones. Expect PvP battles, clan features and a cash shop to quicken progression.

➔ Main points:

• Free idle-management clicker game that's addictive
• Lengthy PvE campaign that offers fun progression
• Very active community to socialize with and create clans
• Simple graphics and gameplay suitable for younger audiences

Full review

Welcome to Hustle Castle!

You'll spend a lot of time staring at this screen!

If you enjoy idle RPG games with a mixture of management simulation, then Hustle Castle is the game for you. Available as a free to play title for PC or mobile, Hustle Castle from My.Games offers a medieval fantasy approach to the kingdom building genre, with plenty of micro-managing gameplay to keep you hooked. The game's premise involves your King and princess going missing, and you must take over the caste, build an army, and embark on a lengthy PvE story campaign to find and save them.

To achieve this, players must master the Castle building aspect. Your castle consists of empty rooms that requires buildings to be inserted that offers a special function. These include the barracks to train an army of dwellers, food production for resources to play PvE missions, gold production to buy upgrades for gear, and the vault to keep them safe, just to name a few. The management aspect of Hustle Castle is what keeps you coming back for more, as players will continually feel the urge to progress and upgrade their castles.

It's All About the Dwellers

Dwellers are the crucial to progressing in-game.

The most important gameplay feature about Hustle Castle is the management of your Dwellers, also known as your settlers. You can drag them into the different rooms to ensure production is taking place, or send them to the barracks which allows you to embark on PvE missions which are story-driven. Dwellers need to be armed with gear and weapons, which can be obtained from missions, crafting or purchasing loot chests. Ultimately, keeping your Dwellers happy, fed and armed will ensure you progress quickly in Hustle Castle.

Hustle Castle's hybrid idle gameplay also ensures that while most of the game's production activities are time-gated, players will still need to manually check each room to see if something is complete and then click on it to receive the rewards. It can be hectic at the beginning as you scramble to upgrade rooms, but once you recruit more Dwellers, management becomes a lot easier.

The PvE and PvP

The main game-mode outside of castle management here is the PvE campaign, in which you send Dwellers out on tiered missions on the global map to progress the story. Each mission consist of a party battle featuring your Dwellers versus the monsters. While most of it is automated, you will have some input when it comes to boss battles at the end of a campaign act, where you can click on powerful skills to shift the tide of the battle. Otherwise, expect gameplay in battles to be mostly automated. Post-mission loot offers progression currencies like gold and food, in addition to weapons and armor which are crucial for your Dwellers to take part in higher difficulty missions. This is where most of the fun happens, as seeing your hard-earn gear on your Dweller melt enemy forces is satisfying, and keeps you enthused about progressing further.

PvP on the other hand, involves attacking other player's castles, or having to defend yours from them. Once again, not much input is involved and you're at the mercy of your opponent's castle rank and Dweller gear scores. For social features, Hustle Castle offers Clans which can put you together with like-minded players and the game does have an decent global chat system.

Pay To Progress Quickly

Battles are mostly automated, but keep an eye on boss fights!

While being entirely free to play, Hustle Castle does poke and prod you often with the allure of spending real money for Diamonds. Diamonds are premium currency that lets you instantly complete building rooms, training Dwellers and more. It's very convenient to have them, but it's definitely not needed to play the game, and you'll only progress slower compared to paying players. There is a solid argument for it being very advantageous in PvP of course, considering attacking other player's castle is a main aspect of competitive gameplay.

Final Verdict

Hustle Castle is a fun idle game that's solid if you need to spend some downtime. It's inspired by games like Fallout Shelter and Throne Wars, but adds plenty of its own twists that enhances the experience. Features like the PvE story campaign and PvP battles ensure that you'll have plenty to work toward in terms of progression, meaning that you'll see a good payoff for all that time spent staring intently at your castle management screen, clicking on rooms and messing with your Dwellers. Overall, Hustle Castle is worth a look.