The King is Watching

I'm a gamedev myself, and that's the only review you need [h1]Idea/Highlights 7/10[/h1] [hr][/hr] - "Gaze". Not everything you build works, only things you gaze at. You can freely move and rotate your gaze to cover the buildings you want to activate. - Resources. There is no storage limit; each basic resource building has limited stock, so you constantly place new resource buildings as others run out - Awesome music with 2 variants. When the tutorial window opens, I hear the same music as in the main game, but a different version, more muffled, with a slower tempo. Very interesting idea. Overall, awesome music, piano-heavy - Prophecy (you can choose which enemies attack you) and council (extra run buffs). I'll describe these in more detail below [h1]Gameplay 6/10[/h1] [hr][/hr] You use building cards to place buildings in your kingdom. Some give resources, some produce units, and some are defensive structures (towers that shoot at enemies while your gaze covers the structure). From time to time enemies approach and you must defend. If they hit your castle too many times, you lose. You can get building upgrades (unique modifiers, usually 2/building type), increase your army limit, upgrade your gaze, and use spells and king abilities to help yourself Most enemies are random, but some you can choose yourself in "prophecy." You basically have mandatory and optional enemy cards that determine which enemies will attack you. You may choose 1-3, so you can control which rewards you get, which enemies attack you, and how many of them there are. Quite interesting. When receiving a reward, you choose 1 out of 3 options. Such as which resource building to get [h1]Progression 5/10[/h1] [hr][/hr] You can unlock new maps and torment levels and buy upgrades in a meta progression tree Upgrades can: - Give you permanent upgrades. Such as a bigger army - Council. You can buy a council slot and unlock new advisors. Each advisor provides a buff such as "+5% to all production", allowing you to combine different bonuses and make "builds" - Heroes. Unlock new heroes Overall, you do not get access to that much more content as you play; you do not become way stronger either. Which can be good for some and bad for others [h1]Replayability 3/10[/h1] [hr][/hr] Different kings (with different abilities and passives), councils, and maps can make runs seem quite varied on paper, but in practice there is very little variety. Kings are different for sure, but they force you to play in one way or another. For instance, one king's passive: "Your defensive constructions deal more damage; you get 1 defensive construction from time to time". It's quite unique and shows you the game from a different perspective, but at the same time it forces you to play defensive structures; otherwise you would have a hard time And many kings are just like that. They force you to follow a specific playstyle There are few differences between playthroughs overall. Units feel very similar, with no high rolls and no fun, unique, or weird builds I think roguelikes are all about replayability and randomness. Here, I felt almost none of either I only played for 8 hours, around 8 runs or something, so not all that long. But I already got tired of it; it's just too repetitive for me [h1]Controls/UI/bugs[/h1] [hr][/hr] All good [h1]Design overview[/h1] [hr][/hr] Worth mentioning (positive) - stylish pixel art, feels great. I particularly like small animated images of the king in the bottom right corner. [h1]Overall rating 21/40 (5/10) [/h1] [hr][/hr] Great, unique core idea. Decent implementation visually and technically I thought a lot about whether to recommend it or not. It's average, just in the middle But decided to be harsh and not recommend it I think randomness and replayability are the most important parts of roguelikes. "King is watching" does not do well in those areas, and so I don't recommend it. If you want a game with high replayability and randomness, I suggest skipping it. If you just want a unique experience without much rng - give it a shot Other players may still enjoy it. But it's bad for me [h1]Extra[/h1][hr][/hr] Follow my curator page, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45084582-Dev-inspiration/] Dev inspiration[/url], for more reviews from a developer's perspective.