I've only been able to play once so far, but the group had a lot of fun. Each castle is a fun puzzle that you and your partner are trying to solve. While it is competitive, we had no clue which castle was winning and everyone seemed more focused on optimizing each castle, not trying to block or screw one of the castle build. Since you take the lowest score of your two castles and final scoring is unknown it is in everyone's interest to try to make their two castles the highest scoring.