Warning: This game behaves as spyware and collects "telemetry" and personally identifying information. While there is an option to disable this, there's no guarantee that will work. Worse, the developers turned this on by default to try to spy on as many gamers as possible. The developers will make the unverifiable claim that this data isn't personally identifying, of course that's BS as they're collecting IPs and all kinds of other information about gamers, when combined with other profiling data this can 100% identify an individual. They say it's for "QA" purposes but there's no guarantee they're not profiling you or selling your data to third parties as they spy on you. Should you trust them? Of course not... if they had any concerns about user safety and privacy, [i]they wouldn't have built spyware into their game and turned it on by default![/i]. There's simply no reason to trust them and gamers should avoid this game because of this unacceptable privacy invasion.
"Realm of the Ghost King" is a badly made amateur ripoff of Rogue/Hack, but with dumbed down gameplay, really crap pixel "art", and it's got spyware embedded in it. Why aren't people lining up to buy this? Oh wait, I know why. It's because it's a badly made amateur ripoff of Rogue/Hack, but with dumbed down gameplay, really crap pixel "art", and it's got spyware embedded in it.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
The game only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio. It's possible they developed this using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this game has been specifically designed for people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming.
The game features no proper level design or game/story flow/plot, as they opted to try to use samey repetitive procgen algorithms as a substitute for adding such content to the game, to avoid doing the important job of level/map design. As a result, the game doesn't actually have any content worth mentioning, just endless, boring, repetitive, soulless algorithmically generated sameyness. Developers must learn that procedural generation is not an acceptable substitute for content.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 3 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
As mentioned this game starts harvesting private data from you and sending it upstream as soon as you launch it, before you can get to the opt-out button (if that even works). Think of this as someone coming into your home, installing a camera in your living room, and refusing to tell you who will be watching it, if they will record the footage and where they will post it. You have no control over your data once they take it from you. Do you trust them? I don't. And you shouldn't either.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
"Realm of the Ghost King" is relatively cheap at $3 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, and the questionable ethical nature of the developer and/or their associates (as outlined above), this is impossible to recommend. Remember that if you buy a game from an unethical developer, you're putting your money at risk.
