Castle of Alchemists, the action tower defense hybrid from Turkish indie studio Team Machiavelli, is heading to PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch through a new publishing partnership with Game Source Entertainment. The game, which launched on PC in April 2025, was featured during Steam's Tower Defense Fest running March 9 through 16. A console release date has not yet been announced.
The pitch is straightforward: what if tower defense had you down on the ground swinging weapons and pulling triggers instead of watching from above? Castle of Alchemists splits every encounter into two phases. First, a tactical layer where you place permanent traps and towers across the map, fortifying chokepoints and laying out kill zones. Then the action phase drops you into the middle of it all as Bellator, an alchemically enhanced soldier armed with melee weapons, firearms, and temporary deployables like clockwork turrets. You built the defences, now you fight alongside them. Enemies arrive from other worlds in massive numbers, factions with distinct abilities pushing against your positions, and the game frames this with the bluntness of a dare: if they come by the thousands, by the thousands they shall fall. The trap and tower systems feed into each other through elemental synergies. Metal traps conduct electricity. Oil catches fire. Acid puddles can be electrified to spread poisonous gas. More than ten status conditions stack and interact, turning your defensive layout into a chain reaction waiting to happen. The moment the action phase kicks in and you're wading through the carnage your own traps are causing while unloading on whatever's still standing, the two halves of the game click together.
Team Machiavelli started as a two-person operation founded in Turkey in 2021. Halil Onur Yazıcıoğlu handled the visual art while Mehmet Can Güler built the game and composed its music. The studio has since grown to three members. That small team size shows in the game's focus. Rather than spreading thin across systems, Castle of Alchemists commits hard to its dual-phase structure and the friction between planning and execution. The pixel art carries a gritty, dark fantasy tone the developers describe as Warhammer-esque, rendered in detailed 2D that gives the violence and the world a handcrafted weight.
That weight matters because the game leans into its mood. This is not bright, cheerful tower defense. The castle you're reclaiming has been overrun. You push through mines beneath the fortress, through engineering forges, through lecture halls emptied of the alchemists who once filled them. Each location tells you something about what was lost. Bellator himself is described as the first of his kind and the last line of defence, a super soldier created through alchemical enhancement, placing him somewhere between desperate weapon and final hope. The fantasy here is thick and industrial, mechanical hordes grinding against alchemical science.
Progression runs through crafting and mutation. Weapons and items carry randomised properties, and detailed skill trees let you mutate and refine Bellator's capabilities over time. The game layers difficulty through boss arenas, endless horde modes, and an increased difficulty setting that offers greater rewards. Traps and towers come in multiple variants, giving the tactical phase enough depth to keep the planning interesting as enemy compositions shift across factions.
The console versions bring Castle of Alchemists to a wider audience after its PC run, with Game Source Entertainment handling global publishing on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. For a game built around the tension between careful preparation and chaotic close-range combat, the shift to console feels natural. Every level is a question of whether your traps hold long enough for you to handle what breaks through, and whether you placed them well enough that anything breaks through at all.