ProvenceTristram

Kingdoms & Castles Starter Keep

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So, I've been playing Kingdoms and Castles recently - a kind of SNES Sim City meets Rollercoaster Tycoon meets Banished and then they all catch the Black Death - and as soon as I booted it up the first time, I immediately fell in love with the starter keep (BEWARE IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED THIS GAME - IT'S SUPER ADDICTING! XD). Now, granted, the game's goal largely revolves around upgrading this quaint structure into a grand fortress... but I've always preferred the simple, pleasant lines of the original keep. The following are some screenshots:

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The game at times almost feels like you're playing with Lego (at least a little), so I wanted to reproduce the structure with bricks. Unfortunately, it wound up being something of a mega-build at nearly 2,900 pieces, which likely means I will never get to experience it in real life. However, I did still want to showcase my work. First, some exterior shots:

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The castle was designed to be fully modular. The keep has two lift-outs and a whole side opens, and the residence portion also has two lift-outs. Unfortunately, this effect is very tedious to reproduce in LDD, so I just kind of tore the thing open to show the interiors (I don't have hours to spend to take screenshots :P [just hours to spend designing Lego I will never build, apparently XD]). First, the dungeon, which has chains (to ensnare a skeleton), spider web, cell, barrel storage, and a secret door for making escapes:

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Next, we have the Great Hall/Throne Room. I pulled the door open for this shot, though it wound up a little dark. The table and chairs are designed to be removable so the King can receive guests (on the nicely tiled floor and red carpet! :D), in which case the room will feature 5 suits of armor lining the walls. There is also a big fireplace, throne (for great sitting is needed to do Kingly justice), and some owl-shaped gargoyles. I agonized over the door for a long time, but there's a sticker from one of the Ninjago sets that would make it look less out of place. The roof for this scene also comes off easily:

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Moving along, we next have the scullery/wine storage. The's a pretty elaborate staircase that you can't see well in this screenshot, a stove, a shelf full of wine bottles, some barrels, food storage on the wall (can't be seen here), and the barred entrance to the dungeon. I used a main door with bars here even though it's kind of ugly, because I acknowledge that this is a castle and not a house, and that entrance is the weakest part of all (although in a siege this whole portion would soon be on fire, in all likelihood :P):

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Finally, we have the Royal Chambers. This is a relatively simple room (I ripped out the windows so we could see inside a bit better) - you've got the King's canopy bed, a fireplace, a stairwell down, and a shelf for storing the crown and imperial sword at night. There's also (again impossible to see) a ladder leading up to the parapet. No part of the castle is technically inaccessible to minifigs:

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And that's it! This is the first castle I've designed since my teenage years... so... it's been about two decades. A lot has changed... and mostly not for the better :P. But I think this, at least, turned out alright in the end! Questions and critiques are most welcome!

 

 

 

Edited by ProvenceTristram

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Very cute. :classic: The game graphics work indeed quite in favour of replicating it in Lego. Perhaps the designers had that in mind as well. The number of pieces looks quite high at first indeed, but its a quite elaborate build, with a lot of attention to detail. Nevertheless, a couple of bricklink orders could get your project into physical form as well. i'm sure it would make a nice decoration piece. Just saying.:wink:

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This is lovely! A great keep and so well built/planned (I never had the patience for the LDD and LCAD designs) are you sure it is impossible to attain as a real life build? After all, nothing in there looks uncommon and it would make for a great display piece in the ol' man cave....

 

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I have that game, and your builds definitely look familiar to the game....good job.

The weird thing - I found the game really addictive (as you mentioned) for about 2 days, then felt like I hit the ceiling for what the game offered.  It went from quite addictive to "eh, I'll probably be ok never playing that again" in a very short period of time.  Not many games do that for me.

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Very cute MOC! I love the details like the texture of the tan wall behind the wooden trusses!

Just a tip, if you want to get screenshots of a modular MOC in LDD, putting parts into groups can be a huge help. That way you can easily show, hide, or move sections of the build as necessary when getting screenshots or even during the build process. That's also a helpful tip for parts that are hinged, as well, since the hinge tool sometimes gets buggy when working with larger constructions.

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