Indie Hour - The King is Watching
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Hey it's Tarrmu and welcome to another episode of Indie Hour where we talk about the latest independent video games that may have passed you by, and in today's video we're going to be talking about The King is Watching a Rogue-like kingdom builder game developed by Hypnohead.
The King is Watching is an interesting blend of two different genres of games. It will see you playing as a variety of different kings which comes with a set of perks and attributes, and then there will be the kingdom that you're overseeing initially 16 plots of land where you can place a bunch of different tiles that produce a particular resource. For example, place a tree, and this will farm wood as a resource. There are essential resources like wood and wheat that will contribute to allowing you to place other tiles that can produce. You'll need to produce soldiers for your front line as The King is Watching is also a wave based game, where hordes of enemies will attack your kingdom, yielding better potential rewards, and you'll be able to stack the frequency of waves along with how difficult you want the encounters to be meaning high risk, high rewards.
But the bread and butter of The King is Watching's loop revolves around this phase of base building and managing resources, and delegating and upgrading units to send out to battle to defend the kingdom. In the early hours and initial runs, the game does feel like you're limited in how far you can progress. But in between each run, there is a multitude of permanent upgrades that can make the subsequent runs much easier. These upgrades can span from new advisors who are boons to your kingdom when you have them equipped for a run, new tiles that you can unlock which have more sophisticated and multi-purpose output for example instead of outputting just wood, it can output wood and wheat or an entirely new resource that interlocks with crazier tiles that help push your further with each run.
But not every single tile is running at the exact same time, as the name suggests the king is in fact watching, which means there is a cursor of active tiles that operate at a given time. Initially you'll have three tiles with the starting king, but through different kings you unlock, the pattern of their gaze will be different. This gaze is important because the king's gaze is what dictates what tiles are active at a given time, and over time in a run you can expand the amount of tiles the king can have his gaze on, meaning more active tiles working in tandem, and it makes the planning of where you do place each tile feel like a strategic move that can run like a well oiled machine when strategically placed.
The way that a match for The King is Watching unfolds, is through two different modes, one being base building and production and the other being defending the base, this means that you'll need to have tiles dedicated to soldiers and different kinds of fighters that can defend your bases. These can span from swordsman, to mages, to mushroom people. There is a continuous push and pull and as time progresses there are different phases, some that are essential that you must plan, and others that are optional and more challenging that offer better rewards, making the proposition of risk-reward being worthwhile.
These phases are topped off with different boss encounters that gradually get harder to deal with making the balance between fortifying defenses and building enough production to build resources need to be running. It plays into that level of strategy that I mentioned earlier. On top of all of this, there are multiple different kings that you can unlock and select for a run. The reason why you would want to pick a different king is because each king comes with three different abilities that focus around a particular type of playstyle. On top of all of these King based abilities, you'll be able to acquire up to six one time use abilities that can be used that have a plethora of different abilities from magic based spells, slowing enemies, or summoning an allies to support you.
The King is watching provides a wealth of replay value, that peels back and expands the more you play, and it feels like you're constantly rewarded with a lengthy progression system that makes both the learning process along with each run feel like you're both understanding the rules of the game, along with having new toys to play with that can build a better and stronger empire. There is a level of ingenuity here, that makes this feel like one of the more satisfying rougelikes that I have played in recent years, and is absolutely one worth checking out.
Let me know your thoughts down below or if there are any games that you'd like to see me cover on the channel, as always I am Tarrmu and this has been Indie Hour, if you enjoyed the video consider giving us a like and if you really enjoyed the video consider subscribing. Thanks for watching.
