I knew it the moment I spent hours on the demo during Steam Next Fest: The King is Watching was going to be that roguelite game you just can’t put down. I’m not sure if it’s the simple gameplay and endless replayability, or the nice graphics and tons of ways to experiment. Either way, Hypnohead and tinyBuild definitely have a winner on their hands, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this game blew up.
So, the game follows a pretty simple loop. You’re building and upgrading all sorts of structures and resources on a 4×4 grid, which actually gets bigger as your castle grows. Your job as the king is to defend that castle from waves of enemies, which get progressively harder, and eventually, take on multiple bosses. Now, those bosses can be a bit annoying, especially if you haven’t got a solid strategy locked down to deal with them.
“You will constantly be facing tougher challenges.”
Your peasants and buildings only function and produce resources when they are under your direct “gaze.” You can only focus your gaze on one area at a time, forcing you to constantly shift your attention. So you must decide where to allocate your limited “vision” to maximize resource production or unit training,
Everything in the game has multiple tiers, so you’re constantly facing tougher challenges. And here’s a really interesting part: you control your own destiny. You get to pick who and what attacks you, and what rewards you get.
You’ll quickly realize this is a proper grind-fest. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of that. One playthrough can last from 45 minutes to an hour, depending on how fast you play. While you can unlock new things, the game doesn’t give you a ton of coins for upgrades. You can unlock new advisors with special bonuses, new troops, or enhanced tiles. There’s actually a lot to play with, so there’s a good reason to keep coming back.
I really wish we could choose our starting units or focus on specific unit types. Oh, and units use different resources and have different classes like grunts, arcane, or ranged units. They all have different HP, attacks, and small bonuses. I particularly enjoyed playing with the arcane ones, like mushrooms or wizards.
“One playthrough can last from 45 minutes to an hour.”
Yes, you can cast spells, but they get repetitive quickly, and only a few seem truly valuable, like fireworks that boost production or legendary spells like Tornado. This probably needs some more balancing.
There’s always “but”. The beginning is always the same; there’s not much variation and that’s a little disappointing. However, there’s actually a good amount of variation in the resources you can get, enhanced tiles, and the rewards you get. Sadly, this is where RNG comes into play, so you’ll depend a lot on it. This also means you really need to strategize and plan ahead.
“You’ll often realize you should’ve done things differently before it’s too late.”
By mid-game, you’ll often realize you should’ve done things differently or focused on other ideas, which is great because the game does a great job of forcing you to think strategically right from the start.I’m not gonna lie, I had a ton of fun playing this game.
But keep in mind, even after five hours, you’ve probably only scratched the surface, maybe discovered 20% of what the game offers. That’s because there are so many other kings and characters to unlock and play with. So don’t be surprised if you find yourself sinking 50 hours into it. Another crucial feature, which I sincerely hope the developers will add, is a save game option. Losing all progress when you close the game is a significant oversight that really needs to be addressed.
Now, there’s still this one persistent problem that’s been around since the demo: lots of useless buildings. They’re not completely useless, but you just don’t have the space or time to use them effectively. Things like concert halls that boost production, or taverns that boost morale – you just can’t really focus on them.
Actually, this game has so many little hidden mechanics. For example, morale lets you hit enemies harder, and you can even see the exact HP and attack per second for both your enemies and your units. You can garrison some units inside your castle and move out only the ones you need to fight. Plus, you can upgrade your “gaze” and the total number of units you can have on the field.
In the end, this is a very good rougelite game. However, it genuienly takes a lot of grind to unlock everything, not everything is fairly balanced and some bosses are slightly unfair with multiple tiers just to beat them. If you enjoy games that blend city-building, resource management, and roguelite progression with a unique twist, The King is Watching should definitely be on your radar.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Great replayability. | Start is always the same. |
| Really fun mechanics. | Lots of grinding. |
| Control your own destiny. | Depending on RNG. |
| Plenty of content to come back to. |
Review copy provided by the publisher
