Castle Lanes

Build on your lane. Your armies march on their own.

A builder-autobattler in the spirit of the classic Warcraft III custom maps: original factions, an authoritative server and a painted low-poly world.

Download for Windows Watch the trailer Linux and other platforms

Playtest build 0.9 · Windows launcher · Linux archive · macOS not yet

An Ember army crosses a stone bridge over a river and marches down a dirt lane: horned warriors with shields, a fighter raising a great axe, a skeleton, and a drake flying above.

The trailer

86 seconds of the 0.9 build, captured in-engine: the three castles, a build on the lane, waves meeting at the bridges and a castle coming down. Open the MP4 (1080p, 68 MB).

How it plays

You never steer a single soldier. You decide what to build, where, and when, then watch the lanes decide the rest.

Take a seat

Pick Vanguard, Grove or Ember in a four-seat lobby. Fill empty chairs with Easy or Hard computer players and play 1v1, 1v2 or 2v2.
Build on your lane

Place buildings on your side of the top and bottom lanes. Each one trains units for its own lane on a timer. Gold comes from income, interest on savings and bounties.
Watch them march

Waves walk out, meet the enemy and fight on their own. Survivors keep marching with the next spawn, so a winning lane snowballs.
Counter and break through

Read the enemy's build and answer it with the right attack and armor types. Upgrade, sell, call a Rescue Strike, and bring their castle down.

The battlefield in Castle Lanes 0.9: dirt lanes and stone roads run across green build plots, a wooden fence marks a build grid, and the lanes cross a river on two stone bridges. — The battlefield in 0.9: the lanes cross the river on two stone bridges. Captured in-engine.

Three factions

Every faction covers every role, so counters stay in your own build menu. They differ in how they want to win.

The Vanguard

Steel, faith and discipline hold the lanes.

A steady frontline that forgives mistakes. Heavy guards and shieldbearers hold, clerics heal, and arcanists and ballistae punish anything that bunches up.

Vanguard units
Unit	Armor	Attack	Trained at
JuggernautCleave	Divine	Normal, melee	War Hall 205
ArcanistChain Lightning	Unarmored	Magic, ranged	Arcane Spire 185
Sky HawkDive: stuns the rearmost foe	Light	Pierce, flying	Aerie 165
ArcherSkyshot: bonus against fliers	Light	Pierce, ranged	Range Tower 100

The Grove

Root, thorn and beast reclaim the land.

Cheap swarms, durable walls and sustain. Wasps and wolves flood the lane, barkguard and treants regenerate, and shamans bog down anything fast.

Grove units
Unit	Armor	Attack	Trained at
Ogre ChieftainRegenerates and slows	Divine	Normal, melee	Ogre Camp 215
TuskerBash	Normal	Normal, melee	Tusker Pen 195
SpitefangCritical Strike	Light	Normal, melee	Spitefen 165
Thorn WaspStinging slow, hatches in pairs	Light	Normal, flying	Wasp Nest 90

The Ember Host

Ash and fire march where the living fall.

Cheap, fast pressure that snowballs. Runners and drakes hit early, casters burn heavy armor, and siege engines set whole waves alight.

Ember units
Unit	Armor	Attack	Trained at
InfernalBurn	Divine	Chaos, melee	Infernal Gate 225
Ash WeaverSlows what it hits	Light	Pierce, melee	Weaver Nest 180
Ember CasterIgnite	Unarmored	Magic, ranged	Flame Spire 115
Spark DrakeFire Breath	Light	Magic, flying	Drake Roost 85

Four of each faction's units shown. In all: 52 units and 51 buildings. Every unit building has an upgrade, most upgraded units bring an aura or a spell, and veteran ranks and banners add more.

What's in the build

A counter table with teeth

Every unit carries an attack type and an armor type, Warcraft III style. Magic melts heavy armor, pierce shreds light, siege cracks fortifications, and only chaos hits divine armor at full strength. Most of the game is reading the other side's army and building the answer.

Damage dealt, by attack type (rows) against armor type (columns). Taken from the game's own table.
	Unarmored	Light	Normal	Heavy	Fortified	Divine
Normal	105%	90%	130%	90%	90%	40%
Pierce	115%	130%	100%	70%	35%	40%
Magic	115%	70%	100%	130%	35%	40%
Siege	115%	70%	100%	70%	150%	40%
Chaos	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%

Authoritative server

The server runs the whole simulation; clients only send orders. Drop your connection and your seat is held while you rejoin.
Computer players that counter

Easy builds on a whim. Hard tests unit matchups on the real simulation, scouts your army and builds what beats it.
Fog of war

Animated fog thins as your vision arrives and rolls back in when it leaves. The server only tells you what your side can see.
Abilities, not stat sticks

Stuns, chain lightning, cleave, burn, shields, nets and summons, plus a Rescue Strike you can call once every ten minutes.
Painted low-poly 3D

Hand-painted ground, rigged and animated armies, warm light and a Warcraft III camera.
60 fps on a Steam Deck

A native desktop client written in Rust. Mouse first, with keyboard shortcuts as well.