“A Social Deduction Game With A Twist”
About The Game
Castle of Blackwater is a 2D, action-packed, social deduction game with a magical twist. In this intense game of trust and betrayal, up to 10 strangers are trapped in a castle of danger and deception, with a mission to complete tasks and escape with their lives.
Gameplay Loop
Castle Of Blackwater is a social deduction game but unlike most social deduction games where you just have a killer and the innocent here there are factions, each faction plays it own little role within the gameplay loop and this alone keep Castle of Blackwater seriously interesting.
In order for me to really explain the gameplay loop to you I first have to explain the factions, First you have the Protectors then we have the Satanic and finally there are the Forgotten. During the lobby phase depending on how many player in a lobby the game will distribute how many of each you will have. Each faction has classes and these are assigned randomly however the Developers have said they are looking at adding a custom mode so player can choose their class aswell.
The Protectors mission is to complete as many missions as possible and fill an XP bar that can be seen at the Book of Tasks alternatively they can vote out the Satanic to win. The Satanics mission is to eliminate all the Protectors or surviving till day 5 and finally the Forgotten win by completing one easy, one medium, one hard task and killing one Satanic and one Protector.
Tasks / Art Style
The tasks within Castle of Blackwater are actually really fun, I wont spoil all of them otherwise what is the point of actually playing the game and enjoying the chaos that happens within the castle walls.
We have a spot of cooking which sees us take part in some chopping that may or may not have been inspired heavily by fruit ninja that is something that you will have to check out for yourselves, you have some book stacking in the form of Tetris, some beer pouring that only the elite can master because I for one can never get the perfect pour. There are a mirage of amazing little tasks here and its actually nice to see some fun interactive tasks in these games because its all to often we see boring mundane tasks in social deduction games so this is actually a breath of fresh air.
The art within Castle Of Blackwater is actually all done by three members of the CoB team. David who is the lead, Alfie is the artist at work here and Ploi who animates it all. Together these guys have managed to pull off some seriously appealing art work that is fun yet stylistic. The werewolf is so cute but do not let that appearance fool you they can move seriously fast. The artists did an amazing job on the environment and all the clothing customisations too.
Interview With Castle Of Blackwater Team
Q: What was the inspiration for the game being made initially?
A: The initial inspiration came from a desire my co-founder and I had to start our own game studio. We were both big fans of the social deduction genre; I had played a lot of Among Us, and he was a huge fan of Town of Salem. We thought it would be a fantastic concept to blend the freedom of movement and atmospheric feel of Among Us with the deep strategic layers and structure found in Town of Salem.
That unique merger of concepts has been the core vision for Castle Blackwater from the very beginning. On a practical level, we also recognized that a 2D game would have a more manageable development timeline and complexity for a new indie studio like ours.
Q: The cat's meow on the game's launch screen is a fun touch. Was this inspired by the Felynes in Monster Hunter?
A: Honestly, not really. It’s actually a bit of an inside joke within the team. Our artist is a huge cat lover, and you can see his influence in other parts of the game, like in some of the environmental portraits. One day, while redesigning the launch sequence, he creatively added the cat meow.
Initially, we all treated it as a joke and didn't intend for it to be a permanent feature. However, it just sort of stuck. We found it quirky and unique, and it helped define us as a team of human beings making a game with personality. So, it stayed.
Q: I can see inspiration from games like Fruit Ninja and archery games in the minigames. What other inspiration was taken?
A: Our approach to minigames was born from a sense of frustration with the task system in Among Us. While we love the game, we felt its tasks could be repetitive and overly simple. For Castle Blackwater, we wanted to emphasize a skill-based component. Our vision is for players to improve at tasks over time; as their skill level increases, they can complete tasks faster, which in turn puts more pressure on the antagonistic “Satanics” to heighten their own skills of deception and elimination to keep pace.
When looking for inspiration, we often draw from classic minigames we enjoyed as kids, which is where the influence from Fruit Ninja and archery games comes from. We have more minigames in the pipeline, including one inspired by a gold mining game I used to play. Whenever we need fresh ideas, we’ll even browse the App Store for fun, hyper-casual mobile games that could translate well into our minigame format.
Q: Who composed the catchy little castle jingle?
A: All of our music and sound design is created by our brilliant in-house sound director, Matthew. He is an absolute genius. I love watching his creative process, whether he’s composing the startup jingle or the music for the “dead ghost” experience. He ensures the whole team is involved at every stage, providing feedback and direction. I believe this cumulative, creative environment really shines through in the final quality of the game’s sound production.
Q: Are there any future plans for the title?
A: Our immediate goal is to solidify the game’s footing. We’re focused on refining the current build, introducing new retention features, expanding on quality-of-life improvements, and gradually adding new characters and maps. Community growth is also a top priority. We stand behind the quality of our game and feel it deserves a much larger player base, so getting more exposure is key.
Once we achieve that on PC, we would love to port the title to mobile and possibly a console like the Nintendo Switch. For the next few years, the focus is on making Castle Blackwater a success. Further down the line, we’ll continue to introduce meta-changing mechanics to keep the content fresh. Perhaps we’ll even strengthen the IP by creating spin-off games in different genres using the same characters and lore to build a whole world of games. The future is bright.
Q: How big is the team currently developing the game?
A: Our team size is dynamic. We have a dedicated core team of about ten permanent employees. However, we also work with freelancers, which allows us to scale up to around fifteen people when project requirements demand it. We prefer to stay lean and flexible during this run-up period, but we always have the potential to expand the team as the game grows and requires a quicker turnaround for updates.
Q: How long has the team been working to reach this current point in the game?
A: We founded the studio in January 2022. The first six months were dedicated purely to ideation, concept development, and writing the Game Design Document (GDD). The following six months were spent developing the initial prototype.
From the very early days, one of the first things we did was build a community. We started a Discord server to find people who believed in our vision, even when the game was still very rough. Since then, it has been a highly iterative process of releasing various builds—from pre-alpha to public beta—and gathering feedback from a growing number of testers. We use that feedback to continuously refine and improve the game. So, all in all, we’ve been working on this for a few years now, since the beginning of 2022.
Q: Is there a reason the werewolf cannot talk once he has transformed, or is this just a bug?
A: This is intentional, although there is a bug we are currently fixing that makes it more confusing. Right now, the voice icon disappears, which correctly implies the werewolf can’t talk, but a bug still allows them to, which we’re addressing.
The reasoning is that we want to mute the werewolf to prevent players from accidentally giving themselves away. Playing as the werewolf leads to many hilarious moments, and we found that players would often start laughing or giggling when someone ran up to them. If their mic was on, it would instantly reveal their identity, which undermines the goal of being an anonymous threat.
In the future, we might explore adding a voice changer or a system where sounds from the player’s microphone trigger an anonymous in-game growl. But for now, the werewolf is muted by design.
Our Thoughts
Going into Castle Of Blackwater I was very sceptical I kept thinking its just another social deduction game, but once I had played the game my entire view changed on Castle Of Blackwater. This is not your average social deduction game, majority of players are adults, each task requires a little skill, each play require a bit of thinking. As the satanist you really have to combine deception with strategy to win, as the werewolf you need to be fast but you also have to be careful (very careful).
The sound design within Castle Of Blackwater is absolutely amazing and upon talking to the sound designer you can see that he has a ton of passion for his work. Fun Fact: He loves a bit of Synth and Electronic music.
The art direction in the game is beautiful, fun, quirky and very very clean. The artist did a wonderful job on this every detail pops which is quite rare on a 2d plain.
Overall we loved our time with Castle Of Blackwater and would highly recommend the game with a little fine tuning (not that it needs much) this could become such a hit.
