The King is Watching

The King is Watching is a smart, surprisingly deep blend of roguelike systems and city-building mechanics that manages to innovate where many similar titles simply reiterate. While screenshots may not sell the experience at a glance, what welcomes players in The King is Watching is a rich and endlessly repayable gem.

The King is Watching integrates city building, strategy, and resource management into a seamless and incredibly satisfying gameplay loop. A few tweaks would be nice, but it's still an original experience that exudes passion from every elegant pixel. It's like when the boss is away at work and you take it outrageously easy, with one difference: here you're the boss; you're the King.

The King is Watching is one of the most addictive roguelite strategies of this year. It has excellent visuals, humor and variability in settlement development. So far the game has problems with randomness and balance, but this only makes the playthrough more interesting.

Yes, some edges might be rough. Some mechanics feel like they’re still being sharpened. But in a genre flooded with sameness, this one is different. It doesn’t just want to be another deckbuilding roguelike… it wants to be the one you remember. I didn’t expect much, but then The King is Watching had me unable to take my eyes off.

The King is Watching is a satisfying, if slightly homogeneous, tetris-like roguelite base builder. While it struggles a bit with variety and uneven meta-progression, its gaze mechanic is a simple and clean hook that, alongside a creative setting and range of kings, makes for an almost comforting building manager run after run. The only problem is, that may not be enough to steal player’s gaze away from the wealth of other roguelikes it’s competing with this year.

The King is Watching features a unique line-of-sight system that heavily influences gameplay and requires a lot of micromanagement. Players must manage resources, train soldiers, and decide on the difficulty of enemy waves and event outcomes. While replayability comes from unlocking new kings, abilities, and advisors, the game suffers from a lack of variety because of the limited maps and events. The biggest issue is the absence of a save & quit feature, though this is expected to be added in a future update.

Most people will probably enjoy the game at first, but the amount of time spent grinding and losing will quickly cause them to lose interest. This is a game for masochists and those willing to spend hours upon hours of their time running into a wall based on the slim hope that just one more run is needed to break through.