"King and Assassins" is a mobile app that's been dumped on Steam as if it was a real PC game (it's not)... it's a cash grab from greedy mobile devs. This mobile app looks like it might be some kind of deep and interesting tactical turn based strategy, but no, there is no limit to just how much mobile app developers can disappoint the gaming industry. This is just a simple boardgame that's been ported to a mobile app and then dumped on Steam as an afterthought/cash grab. Gameplay consists of guiding your "King" piece around a grid map, supported by "Knight" pieces that push around assassins, who in turn will try to get to the king... which makes it sound like Chess but this is much more dumbed down (and less fun) than that.
One of the big problems here is in terms of the general design and the way the boardgame was ported. There's two aspects of any game. The mechanics of the game, and the interface that the players have with that mechanic. Poker, for example, is about randomly generated hands that players get, and the interface is the randomly drawn paper cards. If you keep the random hand, but remove the physical cards, the game still works, but it's streamlined, more pure. That's video gaming. The best video games put the players directly against the core game mechanic. We don't love games because of their interfaces, we love them for their mechanics. The less that the interface gets in the way, the better. So here, we have a boardgame/cardgame conversion, and the focus of the developers has clearly been to keep, and emulate the annoying physical interface, without bothering to improve on the mechanics or put the players closer to them. As a result of this hamfisted decision, the mobile app is clunky and annoying to play compared to games that were designed from scratch to be PC games.
From a technical perspective, as a mobile app, this doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
There's no options to change the resolution for the mobile app or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this mobile app is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this mobile app will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. There's no way for gamers to try improve the low quality mobile phone graphics.
The mobile app features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the 1990s. It's unclear why the developers weren't able to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets for the mobile app (although the requirement for this to run on low end mobile phones is a factor), and also irrelevant... what matters is that this looks bad as a result of their decisions, a compromise PC gamers shouldn't have to put up with.
The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just iPhone screen tapping stuff. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here. In fact the developers were so lazy about this cash grab mobile app they didn't bother changing the text where it tells you to tap on your iPhone screen. What a joke, and an insult.
Because this is a mobile app, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the iPhones that the mobile app was designed for. These are unfortunate handicaps and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was an afterthought for the iPhone developers who are to blame for this. The mobile app is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for mobile phones forces upon a game. Once more, mobile devs have made gaming worse for everyone. I didn't spend thousands on building a gaming rig just so I could pretend it's an iPhone.
These technical defects push this mobile app below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The developers appear to be involved in suspicious data harvesting as they eschew SteamWorks (because SteamWorks does not facilitate privacy invasion in the ways the developers prefer) in favour of demanding users create a third party account (and thus the availability for the developer to harvest private, personal details). Presumably this is so they can profile you, collect data on you, combine that data with other sources and sell your private information off to the highest bidder (and, in fact, anyone else who is willing to pay for it). That's reprehensible and must not be tolerated. I'm sure they'll swear black and blue they don't, so "just trust them", but I wouldn't trust these shady developers as far as I could throw them. An ethical developer would use SteamWorks. Stay safe out there.
Once more we see greedy mobile devs trying to scam PC gamers. On Steam, this is $7 USD, on app stores, it's half that. Mobile devs must learn PC gamers are not here to be gouged, and can't be expected to pay TWICE THE PRICE for a cheap mobile game just because it's been lazily dumped on Steam. This is unacceptable disrespect for PC gamers. Because this is a mobile app, is priced to insult and gouge PC gamers, and because of the other defects, it's impossible to recommend. Just who do they think we are?
