The King Is Watching Review: He’s Still Staring
Stop picking your nose, 'he's' watching you.
No matter where you go, The King Is Watching, or that would be the case if you were playing tinyBuild’s latest. Yes, we’ve covered this before in an early build; however, it’s now full steam ahead as the game emerges from the developmental Dark Ages and into the technologically advanced Middle Ages. Rather, that’s the timeline for this rogue-like RTS.
You can complain all you like about the King and how oppressive they are, but here’s a quick reality check for you, you wannabe peasant: you are he. With a watchful eye, quite literally, you have to ensure
the protection of your subjects from frequent invasions by establishing a production line of all manner of resources such as water, wheat, ore and gold. The basics will enable you to build a formidable army, as well as trade at the local markets to improve the stats for your current run.
Let’s do what we always do and skim over the basics. What makes The King Is Watching different is your gaze. Structures are placed on a grid system and will be highlighted by a Tetris-like cursor. Any structure within the area, initially three squares, will become active. The core structures will be resources and troops, and by hovering over each one, your subjects will either haul in the loot or make new troops to protect against the incoming waves.
Troops in The King Is Watching will be primarily melee, ranged or magic, with the occasional support like sheep. Yep. Each type of troop has certain material requirements and a cap for how many you can build/deploy. Through a series of waves, you can select how many groups you wish to face for a host of different goodies from structure and troop upgrades through to spells and an abundance of resources. On top of that, you can increase the number of troops you have available, house those you aren’t using, plus upgrade the gaze, meaning you can have more structures active at one time.
As mentioned, we’ll skim over the fundamentals, but be assured that there’s an ongoing timeline that indicates the next wave, a game speed adjuster for moving things forward or pausing, as well as a plethora of spells and abilities that are specific to the King. When you begin the game, you only have peasants to work with. These are serviceable until you unlock the random buildings required for better soldiers. Until that time, you will have to rely on spells, which regrettably are limited, though often powerful.
The King’s abilities aren’t available to begin with, as you have to unlock a skill tree and individual challenge modes. Naturally, the further you go, the better the rewards. What else? There are advisors, too. These add several buffs from more starting resources, to being able to spawn an elemental attack when your comrades fall. What did I play The King Is Watching on? The Steam Deck, of course – taking it on holiday with me and playing that exclusively. There are two reasons for that: it’s a review title where a code was supplied, and it’s bloomin’ addictive.
For each run, you are awarded coins to have a better loadout. Tiles to boost productivity, more resources, a selection of advisors and brand new structures. The variety is excellent, though, pushing the challenge mode to one side, The King Is Watching is very much rinse and repeat. Some of the unlockables are no-brainers, such as upgrades and advisors, but locking the encyclopedia and gallery was a bit silly. Who’s going to spend their coins on that to begin with? Needless to say, all my money has gone into improving my runs, and as you can imagine, The King Is Watching begins with a few walls to break through, but once you start to scratch the surface, this is a very, very good rogue-like with lots of replay value.
