This year, the big chicken asks you to consider nominating Castle Crashers for the honor of Steam's Labor of Love Award! Interested in learning some quick history about all the love we've poured into our second-ever game baby? Read on!
We first shared a playable demo of Castle Crashers at San Diego Comic Con back in 2005! Running on a GameCube dev kit, this early version had slightly different designs for our four brave champions and was codenamed “Ye Olde Sidescroller.” After three years of hard work, Castle Crashers was officially released for the Xbox Live Arcade in August 2008, taking the world by storm with its hilarious animation, colorful world, and addictive beat ‘em up combat! Our co-op arcade adventure was further developed with downloadable content in the form of playable characters, weapons, and animal orbs before receiving its first port for PlayStation 3 in 2010. Two years later, Castle Crashers became our first title available on Steam, where you’re reading this post right now! Woah!
Back in 2015, we released the Barbarian Makeover on Steam, introducing the Back Off Barbarian mini game, an ultra graphics setting, and loads of bug fixes and improvements! This version was later released for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and the Nintendo Switch as Castle Crashers Remastered, with the latter receiving a physical release in 2023 – our first physical copies of any game since Alien Hominid back in the early 2000’s!
In August 2025, we launched the Painter Boss Paradise DLC to add a longtime requested feature to the game – custom character capabilities! Featured after the game’s iconic Painter Boss, the DLC also added a TON of new art throughout the game, quality of life updates, and a new official character in Paint Junior. Thanks to community contributions in the Castle Crashers Steam Workshop, almost 40,000 custom characters are available for DLC players to choose for their co-op adventure!
This year, we’re celebrating 17 years of crashing castles together! Thanks to your unwavering support, our (small) big chicken indie dev team continues to follow our passion of making games of all shapes and sizes for you to enjoy. If Castle Crashers has made a lasting impact on you after all these years, we’d be honored to have your nomination for this year’s Labor of Love Award! By the way, all of our games are on sale this week, including Castle Crashers at 70% off, AND we’ll be streaming tomorrow on YouTube and Twitch to celebrate our love for Castle Crashers at 2 PM PST. See you soooooon!