A remake for the Nintendo Wii was released in 2008, with arts and crafts graphics and much less violence as opposed to the Flash version's Stick Figure Animation and Ludicrous Gibs.
A Prequel game was released in 2007, titled Pillage the Village, which is mechanically similar but putting the player on the offensive rather than the defensive, killing and looting villagers and destroying their homes.
STAGE 1. DEFEND YOUR TROPES:
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Defend Your Castle
- Action Bomb:
- Eventually, you face enemies wearing explosives so they can blow themselves up when they reach your castle.
- You can send converted units as kamikazes so they can kill bunches of enemies by exploding.
- Anachronism Stew: A medieval castle, Battering Ram users and archers, as well as suicide bombers with dynamite/TNT strapped to themselves.
- Battering Ram: The second enemy type to appear carry battering rams for more damage at the cost of lower speed.
- The Blank: Aside from the giants, none of the stick figures have faces.
- Chromatic Arrangement:
- The three spells use red, yellow and blue icons. The "Kill" spell uses a red icon, the "Detonate" spell uses a yellow icon and the "Convert" spell uses a blue icon.
- Three of the castle's four towers have a yellow, red and green flag (for workers, archers, and wizards respectively). The remaining tower has a blue roof.
- Critical Existence Failure:
- The castle shows no visible damage until its health bar is drained, at which point you cut to a black game over screen.
- Giant Mooks only stumble slightly and then keep running when you click on them, but do it a few more times and they collapse into a puddle of blood.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: Unarmed enemies, can destroy your castle by banging on the door with their fists repeatedly.
- Endless Game: You keep going until your castle is destroyed, or until you get bored due to the ability to load your game when you fail. Due to subpar balancing typical of old Flash games, it's likely that you'll get so powerful you can just leave the game going forever and never lose.
- Enemy Exchange Program:
- The Temple upgrade allows you to convert enemies to your side by dropping them inside the castle (non-fatally, of course).
- One spell allows you to directly convert an enemy to your side.
- Evil Overlord: Pillage the Village reveals that you're effectively this.
- Giant Mook: Around stage 14, giant stickmen are introduced which need to be clicked on several times to kill them instead of throwing them into the air.
- Guide Dang It!: Even guides to the game on websites where it was posted often neglected to mention how to defeat the Giant Mooks, and the game certainly doesn't tell you directly (especially since clicking on regular enemies doesn't do too much).
- Having a Blast: A spell allows you to make an enemy explode.
- Hold the Line: The game is called "Defend the Castle", and that's exactly what you do.
- Lighter and Softer: The Wii version features arts and crafts-style graphics and not a drop of blood.
- Ludicrous Gibs: It doesn't matter whether they die from being shot with an arrow, falling or a Touch of Death spell, the stickmen always get their entire bodies crushed into a little pool of blood that immediately evaporates.
- No Plot? No Problem!: Not until the Prequel at least.
- Not the Fall That Kills You…: The primary way to kill enemies early on is by throwing them into the air and watching them plummet to their demise.
- Regenerating Health: Unlocking the Workshop and training your converted units as craftsmen allows your castle to regenerate health over time, instead of having to spend points repairing it after each level.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: You can defend your castle on your own just fine until the enemy numbers start increasing exponentially.
- The Siege: Your castle is under attack by an infinite army of stickmen and you have to kill as many as you can while keeping your home safe.
- Scoring Points: Doubling as these and as currency to buy upgrades.
- Stick Figure Animation: The art-style for this and some other XGen games.
- Suicide Attack: The enemy will sometimes send stickmen with bombs strapped to themselves after you, but you can click on them and have them kill a bunch of their allies instead. You can also use converted units on standby as suicide bombers if you have the Demolition Lab.
- Touch of Death: The first magic spell lets you instantly kill an enemy by clicking on them.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can use converted stickmen as suicide bombers if you want.
- Zerg Rush: Individual units are all killed very easily, but you will get overwhelmed very early on without an army of your own.
Pillage the Village
- Anachronism Stew: Medieval villages and knights, as well as people with parachutes, hang gliders, jetpacks, Superman and giant bowling balls.
- Anvil on Head: The Acme Anvil lets you crush people into a fine paste with one.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The OMGWTFBBQ!1! lets you throw a giant fireball at people that dissipates over time. All it does is sometimes knock people into the air, if the physics are nice to you, and it's not even that awesome in appearance. Using anything else is much more efficient.
- Bullying a Dragon: The thief enemies, instead of fleeing right away, will climb to the top of the screen and try to steal your money first. The Superman enemy, instead of fleeing at all, will run towards your cursor while looking proud. What probably happens to both as a result is to be expected.
- Cruel Mercy: One of the "pacifist" items lets you kidnap and enslave villagers to work in your coal mine for the rest of their lives instead of murdering them.
- Endless Game: As with Defend Your Castle, you keep going until it gets too difficult or you don't feel like it.
- Helping Hands: Apparently, the cursor and his son are actual disembodied giant hands.
- Invincible Villain: The most that any enemy can ever do to you is chop your finger off with an apparently magic sword, which regenerates quickly after and only prevents you from grabbing things temporarily. The only way you lose is if too many villagers escape from you, and even in Defend Your Castle where the villagers are on the offensive they completely ignore you, the cursor, just going to destroy your castle.
- Karma Meter: Parodied. Measures the difference between killing innocent people "gently" vs brutally.
- Leave No Survivors: Apparently your conquest fails if too many people from one village manage to escape.
- Made of Iron: Even The Goomba villagers in this game can survive having an entire house lobbed at them. Later enemies can be thrown straight into the ground multiple times and get right back up.
- Mercy Kill: One of the "pacifist" items lets you euthanize villagers instantly. Granted, the reason it's a mercy kill is because the alternative is you killing them in a much more painful way or enslaving them.
- Obliviously Evil: The protagonist apparently has no idea why the villagers would hate him.
- One-Hit Kill: Several abilities effectively share this purpose.
- Prequel: This game explains the protagonist's past and the reason behind their castle being attacked in the original.
- Rhyming Title: Pillage the Village.
- Shout-Out:
- The Power Gauntlet is a Nintendo Entertainment System Power Glove.
- One of the enemies is a Superman Expy.
- Time Dilation: The explanation for how you stop time is by altering your perception of it.
- Time Stands Still: One of the "pacifist" items lets you stop time.
- Video Game Caring Potential: You can purchase spells in the "pacifist" category, which lets you euthanise villagers or put them to work for free in your coal mine, no application or willingness necessary.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential:
- Damage a villager just up to the brink of death, and watch him crawl on the ground and groan in agony for a bit before snuffing him out.
- The "antagonist" spells, requiring negative karma to purchase, are all about killing people efficiently and brutally. These include the Power Gauntlet which lets you squeeze people to death, the Acme Anvil which lets you crush people with it, the Great Barrier which repels people who are about to escape, and the OMGWTFBBQ!1! which lets you throw a miniature sun at people.
- The "pacifist" spell Slave Cage lets you enslave people and put them to work in a mine instead of killing them, which many would argue is worse.
- Villain Protagonist: It's revealed in this game that the reason random people are trying to tear down your castle is because you built said castle upon the corpses of countless innocent villagers in a ruthless marauding campaign.
