In a sea of uninteresting co-op games, Castle Panic is particularly uninteresting. Releasing hot on the heels of 2008’s genre watershed Pandemic, it had a brief flash of popularity in the form of expansions, alternate versions, and spin-offs which has since tapered off. Revisiting the game now, it’s hard to believe it was ever en vogue. Castle Panic has none of Pandemic‘s thematic creativity, social puzzle solving, or clever narrative structure. It doesn’t even seem to try. Instead of learning from and iterating on successful tabletop designs, Castle Panic‘s primary artistic influence appears to be early 21st century web browser tower defense games. And, like many games of that ilk and era, Castle Panic feels amateurish, desultory, and unfinished. It has the elegance of a mid-stage prototype, the tactical depth of a “match 3” mobile game, and the social impact of a jigsaw puzzle. The first thing you’ll notice when you open up Castle Panic‘s box is how cheap the components are. Now, I am a far cry away from being a snob in this regard, but this is some of the worst chipboard stock I’ve seen in a published game. The tiles and standees feel like they’re made of pressed construction paper, giving off the impression that the game is a prototype that just so happens to be on store shelves. The cards are even worse, like unpressed construction paper. But these are trivialities compared to the game’s real problems — and the precise psychological ramifications of lackluster productions are impossible to define in pragmatic terms…