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ContentsChapter IV

Casteria

Nine towns, nine roads, real weather, and one real hour to every day.

Nine towns, and no two look alike.

Nine towns, and no two are alike. Frostford’s glacier lanterns. Gearhaven’s brass and drizzle. Lanternwick, where it is always violet dusk. Stormspire, where you can count the seconds after the lightning.

Real weather, on a real clock

One real hour is one whole day in Casteria — half an hour of daylight, then half an hour of night. The sun rises, crosses and sets while you walk, and the moon rides the other way.

Your own clock tells you the time in Casteria. The real minute hand is the sun: on the hour it is dawn, quarter past is noon, half past is dusk, and quarter to is the middle of the night. And the moon keeps the real moon’s own 29½-day cycle, so the shape hanging over Casteria tonight is the shape hanging over your house tonight.

You see all of it, because every outdoor area carries a real horizon: a band of live sky across the top of the screen, edge to edge at whatever size your window is. Six clouds drift across it, and the weather decides what they are — fair white cumulus on a clear day, steel nimbus in the rain, stratus racing through a blizzard, gold cirrus in a dust storm. Sunrays break through it. Over the ice, an aurora in three curtains.

Fourteen kinds of weather

Snow, blizzard, rain, drizzle, thunderstorm, hail, fog, dust storm, sea spray off the harbour, heat shimmer over the dunes, tumbling autumn leaves, drifting blossom — and falling stars, in one secret place. Thunderheads light up from the inside. Sun through rain puts a rainbow up, low and opposite the sun, where a real one would stand.

The weather changes about every three real minutes, and each town gets only the fronts that suit it — Frostford has blizzards, Dunemarch has heat shimmer, Tidemoor gets the sea spray. A front eases in, holds, and eases out again rather than snapping on. Clear skies are still the most common weather by a distance.

And none of it ever hides the board. Weather here is atmosphere, never an obstacle — you can play straight through the worst of it.

  • Frostford at dusk, captured from the game: falling snow, lit cottage windows, pines.
    Frostford
  • Gearhaven, captured from the game: streets paved with chessboards, the market stall, and the Gearhaven Chess Club's brass door.
    Gearhaven
  • Lanternwick in violet dusk, captured from the game: lantern-lit boardwalks between the hedges.
    Lanternwick

The bar along the bottom

One strip, always there, and it answers the four things you actually keep asking: where am I, what am I meant to be doing, what is the weather, and what time is it.

  • The placeThe town or road you are standing in.
  • Your goalThe next thing the story wants from you, in one line. Long ones scroll.
  • The weatherNamed in plain words — rain, blizzard, heat shimmer, petal drift. Nothing shows when the sky is clear.
  • The clockCasteria’s own time, with a sun or a moon beside it.

Then three buttons: the map (M), the sound (N) and the menu (I).

A map in the corner that stays readable

Press M, or Y on an Xbox controller, and a map of wherever you are standing opens in the corner. It is not a coloured grid standing in for the place — it is a picture of the actual world, drawn at your screen’s own sharpness, with the ground outlined where it changes and shaded from the north-west, so buildings, trees, water, paths and plazas read apart at a glance. You are a live dot on it.

The minimap always stays readable. Night never darkens it. A storm never fogs it. The horizon is never in it. It looks exactly the same at three in the morning in a blizzard as it does at noon on a clear day — which is precisely when you need to read it.

  • The minimap of Openfield, as the game draws it in the corner of the screen.Openfield
  • The minimap of Frostford, as the game draws it in the corner of the screen.Frostford
  • The minimap of Gearhaven, as the game draws it in the corner of the screen.Gearhaven
  • The minimap of Lanternwick, as the game draws it in the corner of the screen.Lanternwick
  • The minimap of Tidemoor, as the game draws it in the corner of the screen.Tidemoor
  • The minimap of Verdant Vale, as the game draws it in the corner of the screen.Verdant Vale
  • The minimap of Rookwood, as the game draws it in the corner of the screen.Rookwood
  • The minimap of Dunemarch, as the game draws it in the corner of the screen.Dunemarch
  • The minimap of Stormspire, as the game draws it in the corner of the screen.Stormspire
  • The minimap of The Championship Gate, as the game draws it in the corner of the screen.The Championship Gate
  • The minimap of The Emberway, as the game draws it in the corner of the screen.The Emberway
  • The minimap of The Gilded Road, as the game draws it in the corner of the screen.The Gilded Road

Twelve of them, at the sizes the game actually draws them — every map gets a chart shaped like itself, so a road is a long strip and a town is a block.

  • Openfield

    Meadow home town — where you live, and where the game begins.

  • Frostford

    Ice under aurora skies. The first club door, and the first Sigil.

  • Gearhaven

    A brass clockwork city in soft drizzle and lamplit wet cobbles.

  • Lanternwick

    Violet dusk, drifting blossom, and lanterns lit along every boardwalk.

  • Tidemoor

    Fog, drizzle and sea spray off the harbour.

  • Verdant Vale

    A forest town in the roots of the Great Tree.

  • Rookwood

    An autumn town where falling leaves are the weather.

  • Dunemarch

    Gold heat-shimmer and sand devils dancing the dunes.

  • Stormspire

    A storm-wracked cliff town, and the last club before the Gate.

the second trailer

Watch the world trailer — how big the game is.

Nine towns and the roads between them, weather that turns about every three real minutes, a clock where one real hour is one full day, 202 lessons, 589 boards, and the six Sigils that open the championship gate. It ends at the Championship Gate.

Recorded in the game — with the game’s own soundtrack.

the three places in 3D

Three doors open into 3D.

Casteria is a hand-painted world seen from above — until you open one of three particular doors, and step into it properly. The Canopy is a treetop walkway above a sea of mist. The Roost is the inn’s top suite, with lava-light in the windows. The Grand Hall is where the championship is decided. None of the three are in the free demo.

  • The Great Tree Canopy
  • The Roost — the suite over the lava
  • The Grand Hall — where the championship is decided

the six chess clubs

  • The Frost Sigil
  • The Cog Sigil
  • The Tide Sigil
  • The Grove Sigil
  • The Sand Sigil
  • The Storm Sigil

Six Chess Clubs keep six Sigils. All six open the Championship Gate.

The six Chess Clubs captured from the game, in Sigil order: Frostford on the ice, Gearhaven's brass door, Tidemoor's harbour boards, Verdant Vale under the roots, Dunemarch in the sand, and Stormspire on the cliff.
The six club doors, in the order you will knock on them.

and the rest of it

There is more in there than the road.

Casteria is not only somewhere to walk through. Two things worth knowing about before you get there:

  • You can buy a houseAn agency in Frostford sells nine homes, one in every town — a ranch in the meadow, an ice house, a loft in the brass town, a beach house, an eyrie on the cliff. They start at 40,000 Pawn Bucks and they are yours to walk into and decorate.
  • The Knight’s Tour MeadowA sunken field of 64 giant stone pads past Verdant Vale. You walk the knight’s tour yourself — every step has to be a real knight move onto a pad you have not stood on. Finish it and the middle four grind open onto a stair.

Beyond that: 26 achievements, a face you build yourself before you leave home, and an Extras tab on the title screen with a chess course, a companion book, the soundtrack and every puzzle in the game.

The free demo is the first part of the game — two towns, Openfield and Frostford, and the road between them. Everything you catch there carries straight into the full game.

Demo coming soonFollow for updates