Yup, pixel castles are hard.

Here’s a terrible attempt that looks like it’s made of cheese!

I started with just creating a room with a window. I decided a stone floor with low detail would avoid the castles looking too busy. I chose a lighter plaster color for the wall.

Since windows will be interactable, I decided to choose a wooden outline trim. Though I think it had too little saturation to look interactable compared to the door.

However, I was happy with the progress, until I ran into a major issue.

Walls are not a great gameplay experience

As I began to create the other side of the castle, I realized angled top down walls took up ~30% of game space. Not only that, but mages could be completely lost behind a wall.

And with castles that need to fit two on a screen while still providing hallways, this was not acceptable.

So what if I collapsed the walls and only showed half walls?

Huge improvement on interior walls, but also somewhat nice on the exterior walls. It also makes the window stand out a bit better for gameplay.

So I chose to add this to all the walls.

Exteriors

Exteriors are not critical for gameplay, but are important for immersion. The player should feel like the castle extends beyond just the 7-8 rooms they have access to for combat.

I liked the idea that the command center of the flying castle is the top of a wizard tower. And perhaps that I could eventually add a hatch that leads down below for bringing other npcs, storage, and other things on their journey.

And, of course, you gotta have a giant chunk of rock (ignore placeholder sky).

Interior Redesign

While the interior was workable, I wasn’t satisfied with the colors. The bright walls called attention to themselves, and the wood didn’t seem to match the rest of the mages in hue or saturation.

So I decided to try making a darker stone castle with wood flooring.

I thought this worked much better, so I redid the whole castle:

All right, I think the direction is clear, now time to get it into the game!