Crownhold

Sadly, I do not recommend Crownhold. In contrast to other reviewers, I think the game is overpriced. It should be a free demo going into early access to be expanded. Based on the trailer, I came in expecting an incremental game where resources needed to be conquered, traded and strategically spent. Perhaps I could try different approaches with each prestige? A game that starts in a small village and expands cross continent. It didn't. What I got was a visually pleasing world done by an individual friendly helpful indie dev that took assets online (mentioned in the credits after completing this, rather short, game). The music gets repetitive quickly. Sound is minimal, and muting everything still allowed an annoying click the bad evil end boss sound through. The towns lose some charm knowing they were not self-drawn. The game loop is adding +100%'s over and over again. This means that it is an incremental idle game that you have to babysit by buying an upgrade every 5-10 mins. Little progress is made if you play it as an idler, too little to do when actively playing the game. A prestige (reset, spent metaprogression currency, and start anew) feels like a necessary rewind. Meta-currency gives more +100%, that is need to overcome a number-wall, but adds nothing to the gameplay. You wait 30-60 mins and feel like you are back to where you started before the prestige. Crownhold contains a minimal story with sieges. There are good ideas behind these, but as it stands, they are functional, not engaging. Sieges are overcomplex and not well explained. In the end you convert citizens to soldiers and don’t want to forget a blue book in the bottom right of the screen to add more +100% by spending supplies (just another resource coming out of a new building that you get when sieges start). There is no strategic depth. The only thing that can happen (happened to me) is that you need breachers to break down a wall before you can start an assault a castle with knights. Sounds logical, but spending too many free citizens on knights first meant waiting endlessly for more citizens to convert to breacher. In the end I prestiged, wasting 30 min, and bought breachers first. Put all together: Crownhold is the first game of one dev. He made it with love. However, there is nothing new that can justify the asking price.

End game progression feels rushed and unfinished.

TLDR: A good game, worth the very reasonable price but falls short of being great. Pros: - Looks wonderful for an incremental game and these graphics help sell the story and setting of your kingdom. - The various resources vary in importance throughout the story but not in a linear fashion (i.e. some early resources become return to being important later in the game). This adds some nice decision making to the order of upgrades. - You don't have to prestige constantly to complete the game (which is a nice change from the norm) - For the first 2 thirds of the game new 'mechanics'/resources are introduced at a good pace to keep you engaged. Cons: - The game is short, completed in about 18 hours, with about 11-12 of those spent idle. Will go back for the last couple of achievements but that's likely to be 90% idle. - There's some really interesting parts of the map which you can't interact with, it feels like there were probably some cut ideas here or maybe room for future expansion? - The last third of the game ramps up the numbers needed for progress but with only a few (slow) ways to speed up that progress. The last wait for Dominion before you can take on the final challenge will almost certainly make you disengage, which then leads to a bit of an anti-climatic ending (I came back from work to click through the last few confirmations of victory). - Progress is essentially linear, while you can prioritise different resource production order eventually every choice will make sense to take, there's no need to choose one upgrade over another long-term. There were a couple of areas where it looked like this may exist (the forest) so it was a little disappointing to find there was none of this in game. - Personal preference but if you're going for a medieval/feudal setting I'd have preferred if the numbers were kept smaller, just to help with immersion. The population numbers stick to this but production quickly goes into the usual super high numbers of other incremental games. I hope this game is a success for the developer and motivates them to try a larger game with this style and setting, even a direct sequel would be welcomed.

Basically has the same progression as Tower Wizard, except this is "3D" and is much longer and more fleshed out. I honestly enjoyed Tower Wizard more, probably because of its simplicity.

Actually it is a cute, little idle-clicker game. Nothing too difficult or too annying. To complete it and get all achievements you need around 10 hours. I hope the developer adds a bit more content, i.e. a next stage or so.

Lagging

A simple and fun idle/clicker game. It's pretty satisfying and you can be sure to finish it in couple days if you really want to.

Very wonderful game, very aesthetic, very enticing. I am sad I beat it, I want to explode thousands of more castles. Also if more clarity or a spreadsheet of what contributes to tactics would be cool.