In this medieval city every citizen has to do their part. Gather resources and fight off the encroaching enemy hordes. And make sure you do your job well, because the king is watching!
Hail to the king!
The King is Watching by Hypnohead is a roguelite kingdom builder. Like the name suggests, this game puts you in the role of a monarch who needs to rule his kingdom with a royal gaze. And you can take this quite literally.
The kingdom you rule over in this game takes the shape of a four by four grid. At the start of your run it will be completely empty, and you have the choice to put some basic building types on them. There are tiles that generate resources like a well, wheat field or a forest and tiles that generate soldiers for your country such as the barracks, peasant hut and the madhouse. It’s your job to gather enough resources to build up enough defenses for your kingdom to survive. But this isn’t as easy as it sounds, because the areas of your kingdom only start working when your royal gaze lingers over them. On this grid, there is a smaller marked area that you can move around and turn to encompass some zones on the field. This is what represents your eye in the sky. And only the areas within will be active and do their task as intended. This may sound troublesome, but it keeps you more invested in the overall runnings of your kingdom. You must be careful as a monarch, because every mistake you make while keeping watch can be crucial for your kingdom.
Fate Foreseen
And you better be mindful of what you build, and how long you decide to watch over specific quadrants, because everything is on the clock. Your kingdom isn’t as peaceful as it may seem at first glance. At certain intervals your city state will be attacked by monsters, trying to bring down the castle walls. Defeating them ensures your survival in more than one way: giving you resources, new buildings to put down and sometimes upgraded versions of existing structures. In a fun twist to an otherwise straight forward gameplay loop, the devs at hypnohead decided to make this battle system a bit more engaging. There is a witch in your kingdom who is able to predict the arrival of enemies. After every three waves of enemies, you can choose between a few options what the next waves will look like. Each enemy option is linked to a reward, and you are able to add additional enemies to a wave to receive extra rewards. This makes playing the game also a balancing act for you as the player. Do you want to risk it and get more powerful buffs? Or do you want to play it safe and survive for longer?
But it’s still a roguelite after all. Dying is rewarded to some extent. After each run, you get in-game currency as a reward. This gives you the option to customize your future runs even further. There are 7 kings to be unlocked. They all have their own abilities and the shape of their field of vision over the city also differs. A change of kings is more dramatic than just a change of a sprite in the corner of the screen. It makes your gameplay choices and the shape of your city entirely different.
Next to this you can also choose to start with benefits like for instant resources, spells or advisors to the king. These last you can add to your council at the start of a run. They act like an equippable perk and make in-game processes easier. There is one that reduces the cost of recruits for instance, and another that buffs one specific tile on the field. There are 28 of them to unlock, so you will be busy for quite some time if you want them all.
Even kings aren’t perfect
As you can see, there is a lot to do in this game. So you will be thrilled to see that the presentation is beautiful. The whole game is made in vibrant pixel art. Every character is unique and brings the fantasy to life in wonderful ways. My favorite one is the vendor of the shop, who I would describe as a sultan on top of a giant toad. The kings are also unique. They’re quite silly and everything comes together in a visually distinct end product. I wish I could say the same for the soundtrack. The tune that plays in the background of your runs is fun to hear at first, but it gets stale very quickly.
The gameplay, to some extent, had the same issue for me. I like the variety in resources to balance and the fact that you need to think about the placement of our units. But once I got to the later stages of a run and everything was in place, it started to feel like a waiting game. Especially after upgrading your gaze to cover a bigger area, the game requires less thinking. I found myself getting distracted faster. Surfing on the web or watching youtube on my second monitor. That aside, I think there is a lot of fun to be had here. If you love strategy games, you will no doubt be able to put a lot of hours into it. But for me, This kind of game is best enjoyed on my laptop on the sofa, while also watching TV. For this reason, I think it would be great on mobile with touch controls.
Conclusion
The King is Watching is a well presented roguelite that offers a new interesting take on strategy gaming, by letting you be more mindful of your unit placement with the ‘field of view’ mechanic. with a plethora of kings, advisors and upgrades to unlock there is a lot to do here. It’s a shame that the runs may start to feel a bit stale once your kingdom starts to be fully up and running. It’s a more casual experience that in my opinion is best enjoyed on the side while doing something else. However, if you love strategy games there are a lot of refreshing concepts to be found. I’m sure you will get your money’s worth. The game is available for PC on steam. There even is a bundle with Drill Core. Another base building game we recently reviewed. So be sure to check them both out if you need a strategy gaming fix.
