One of my favorite computer games of all time is Castles 2: Siege and Conquest. I first purchased this game in 1994 as a present to myself for finishing my first Master’s degree. It’s a fantastic game (especially for back then) which has similarities to many other games. You build your kingdom by “harvesting” resources, taking territories, using diplomacy, and working through social and political situations that come up. Gotta keep the populace happy so your armies can fight well.

The best part: You can design and build your own castles!! The bigger or more elaborate cost more and take longer, of course, but you can build your own designs and then use them! The armies actually fight on fields and you can guide them as they fight. That includes if you’re attacking or defending a castle. Instead of just having a field of battle, you have the actual castle that you designed, so your design can greatly affect the outcome of the battle. Great features for such an early game (published in 1992).

The original game was CD-ROM based and included video clips of actual (BBC, I think) on-site discussions of castles and their features. It was VERY educational and interesting and all built around the game. And there were also clips from the movie Alexander Nevsky that were used throughout the game when intrigues, plots, and warfare occurred, to illustrate with video what was going on. For 1992, it was simply a great computer game.

Today I found out that this game falls into a category of computer games called “Abandonware” which means the publisher went under and there’s nobody to fight for copyright. It’s not freeware, just abandoned and so pretty much the same thing as freeware.

So now you can download the game for free yourself. This version isn’t the full-featured version and doesn’t have all the neat video stuff, but the basic gameplay is the same and is still fun. You can get it at Abandonia, which also has many other games that are considered Abandonware.

One tip: the way the game was originally designed, you’ll have to answer a question after playing a little while, that has the answer in the original game manual. The questions and their answers have been published here.

Enjoy!