The Castle Doctrine is a 2014 strategy video game developed and published by Jason Rohrer for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux via Valve's Steam platform.

In creating the game, Rohrer was influenced by his childhood fear of his house being robbed, numerous publicized shootings, and his own political views regarding gun rights and home invasions.

[1] When invading another's house, the player can attempt to deter these defenses in such ways as smashing windows, dismantling walls, short-circuiting machines, and even drugging guard dogs with tainted meat,[1] in addition to killing any residents that are armed.

[6] The game's central theme is the castle doctrine and includes the issue of gun rights; Rohrer created it partially as an "artistic statement" on defending one's family through violence.

[5] Rohrer noted in an interview his aversion to creating a "ridiculous caricature of some post-apocalyptic man’s world, where we’ll all just robbing each other," and instead called his game pre-apocalyptic in setting and style.

The game was, however, influenced by Minecraft, which—while heavily tied to cosmetic decoration—involves similar themes of protecting one's creations from other players as in The Castle Doctrine.

[5] Rohrer thought of adding family members for the player's character early in the game's development, but scrapped it at first because of the extra complexity and not knowing how to make them more than inanimate objects.

Polygon's Russ Pitts found the game a frustrating exercise, his experience determined by the arbitrary quality of player designed houses, and further obstructed by the harsh consequences of failure.

[3][16] Keza MacDonald, in her review at IGN, shared these frustrations, finding that tackling player-constructed houses made the game over-reliant on trial and error.

[15] Nick Capozzoli of GameSpot also gave the game a largely negative review, criticising the nihilistic feel, and saying that it did not bring out the emotions it was aimed to.