Fool's Court

The Review: Great game overall need a way to view quests that activate need more interactive windows for like the stats of the kingdom need a way to show what the symbols stand for when option picking will say though it is an amazing experiance to play and it is going in the right direction i will say though please fix repetitive dialogue issues as you can get the same one two or more times during the playthrough i bid you great prosperity into bringing the game into its true light and continue to support you thank you very much for reading. if your a solo dev then you are on your way to becoming a very good game creator Funny References within the game.

This game has some really good potential. Could use some UI changes. For the Taxes maybe a - or + to increase or decrease the amount to put all taxable factions on one screen. Would like to see values assigned to the approval ratings and other changes at the days end. Of adding in more events as some repeat back to back or maybe add an interval where events have a cooldown to help other events coming out. Oh when some choices effect approval maybe have a tooltip pop up when you hover your cursor over the icon just to say what that icon is for! Excited to see the progress to come!

TL/DR Summary: If you want to laugh about yourself, buy it. The "game" is extremely true to it's name. To make it clearer: This isn't so much a game as it's a meta-joke. If you buy it you're actually wearing a fools crown. At least that's what it feels like to me. And if you want some more details, let's first talk about the "kingdom management" part and then your "decisions". I came in hope of something like the petitioners from the classic game "castles" but it's basically a non-game because decisions are hardly a thing. -------------------- First of all the kingdom part: You'll never know <insert whatever you want to know other than the amount of money in your treasury>. You'll really never actually know anything meaningful about your kingdom. The game is incredibly bad at communicating anything other than your treasury account. There is no actual summary of anything to be found. The whole summary screen is basically "This value was raised and this was lowered and this stayed the same". But it won't tell you anything meaningful about anything, like: Raised by and to which amount?! No idea. Lowered by and to which amount?! No idea. It stayed the same... so is it at a good value?! No idea. Is this faction still content or does it feel contempt because e.g. I raised their taxes? No idea. There is an almost complete lack of information in the "summary screen". You'll give money and resources to raise armies or improve their gear or built new watch towers or whatever but you'll never know how many soldiers you got, how many commoners there are, why there is a need for new watchtowers (what happened with the ones you financed yesterday?)... or why that one soldier is again at your court telling you that there is a war on the border (with whom? no idea?) and asks you to raise another 150 men to fight ... whomever. Does raising the maximum of 150 each time have any effect on the unknown enemy? No idea! How is the war going? No idea! Is there a threat of an invasion if I don't finance the reinforcements? No idea! Even that one single piece of data you get about your kingdom (the current amount in the treasury) is so sloppy it won't even bother to make high numbers a bit more readable. So you got 547823 coins and that "decision" here will cost 20000. It's manageable but far from a good experience. -------------------- Now let's get to your "decisions": Most petitioners are repeaters that ignore your "decisions" completely. Examples: There is a guy who says that the neighbors dog ripped appart two of his pigs. You can tell him that's his own problem several times and he's coming back. You can take the other option, that you'll look into it and even compensate his losses as if that would be a problem of the crown and he'll still come back. There are hunting parties and merchants coming in to give you your "reward" from their recent endevours. Decide if you praise or scold them for the amount they brought you, but your "decision" matters nothing. It's always the exact same reward, when they show up each and every time. There is a guy asking to put all the beggars from the merchant place into the dungeon. Sometimes he comes multiple times a day. Your "decisions" are very limited. You can say yes and 30 people go into the dungeon or you tell him to go (which I usually do). How about a third option like putting him in a dungeon cell with those 30 men to discuss it out for a while or some other creative choice like having him pay for royal guards being placed around that merchant place to control who gets in etc.? Speaking of guardsmen. One is showing up again and again telling me that the tavernkeeper is only serving meade and he'd like something new like a spicy cider or something. "decide" to look into it and it'll just repeat. Or the "Jumanji-peasant" who is constantly finding a strange boardgame whose pieces are moving on their own when you throw the dice and conjures bats, who asks you if it might be magic or not. "Decide" however you like. He'll just mumble something, go away and there won't be news about it, he'll just come back telling the same story and ask you again. Oh, this boardgame must be the mostplayed game in the whole fools kingdom! There is almost nothing you could call progression in this meta-joke. There seem to be a few "quests" that actually make progress, like upgrading your forces or deciding if you allow a snake-oil-salesman to come into your kingdom, but the vast majority are total and complete non-decisions on repeat like the above. The "real quests" are "noted" in some kind of abysmal "questlog" if you want to even call it one. It's a non-obvious slider, that you can drag with the mouse. But the notes won't give you much of a clue about anything either. And the "Quests" don't show any meaningful impact on your kingdom. In part of course because... there is no kingdom to begin with! (because ... there is no meaningful summary of anything at all in this fools court.) ---------------- So as a final summary: There's some humor in it but it's a near total lack of anything that you could call kingdom-management. And if you hope for a plot. I'll not say that there are plotholes. You're in the fools court... so expect no plotholes, expect a sieve with very coarse mesh in place of anything that even remotely would give you any feeling of a progression. There are no adivsors helping you to understand your "kingdom", no recurring memorable characters, almost nothing resembling an actual decision buuuutt.... there is indeed a very very convincing "fools crown" to wear in this game. You won't see it but like with the "emperors new clothes" you'll feel it on you... if you play the game ;-)