Reigns (2016)

To have something to do while lounging around our summer cottage, I downloaded Reigns and pretty much played it "through" in one sitting. I guess that already is a sort of a testament of the game's allure but just saying that kinda makes for a dodgy review so here goes.

Reigns is a game where you play as a king and you need to make decisions that keep you alive and/or in power, basically. Decisions always have two options and you answer them Tinder-style by swiping left and right. The decisions affect four stats of your kingdom: church, approval of the people, army and money. When any of the stats reaches either 0 or 100, you lose. There's also occasional choices that lead to to die right away as well as dungeons and turn-based duels that can end in your death if you fail them. There's also some buffs that you can get by doing specific choices that can help you to manage your kingdom's stats. Should you lose, a new heir will step up and the cycle continues.

The game has a distinct superflat artstyle and some funny humour in its writing but in general, it's function over style. The simple gameplay loop and desicion-chains is where the meat of the game is, and it works rather well. It's not the meatiest package though. You'll unlock more choices after acheving specific things in the game and there's some scripted events that happen after you have played for enough but other than that, there's not much else. Not that it needs much more: it's a game that is immediately graspable and offers fun replayability for a while. For a 3€ game, I feel that's fair.

It's a clever idea for a mobile game, perfect to just chill 5 minutes when you are bored.

I was curious to play this game because it felt like it was an interesting mechanic for a mobile experience and I also liked how they got it from Tinder, and was curious to see how far just saying yes and now could go.

I'm not saying I have been disappointed, but I bit underwhelmed? Yes.

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There isn't much to do, the dialogues starts to get boring/stale very soon, and you will keep getting the same cards over and over.
I like that, especially on the first 500 years of play, you get new cards and "plots" very frequently, it's what makes you keep playing mostly, but very soon, even the new cards feels like the same and the excitement wears off.
I also liked that you need to understand how your action are shaping the story.

The achievement system also does help you stay curious and keep playing, but I have to say that it half worked for me and mostly because I am very curious, I had to force myself to play just to see if there was a little bit more.

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As for the 4 resources system, at first I kind of disliked that I couldn't roleplay to prefer church over other stuff for example, because if you do and gets too powerful you still lose, but when I understood it was more about balance, to avoid one of the 4 pillars becoming stronger than the king, I actually started to like it. The main issue with it is that at some point it's just min maxing, and that you do actually not care much about what is happening story wise but only where the dots are and their sizes.

The min maxing aspect is is possibly something that also made me less invested in the game, since I started to see it as just number very soon, despite still trying to stay involved in the events and always reading the cards.

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Aside for it becoming too repetitive, I also would have liked for the game to sort of have a storyline or a way for me to know if I already did that a path, or if an answer still had some consequences to explore, because at some points it's hard to keep track of every chances. This would have made the discovery of every path and achievement more enthralling I believe, since you could feel more the progress run after run, making it easier in a good way to keep exploring new scenarios.

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Another thing I've found annoying is that it's hard to keep track of which war is currently on what things are "active", and on top of that, what is going on even on your next king. Crusades of course are a clear example of something that spans more lives, but other stuff, I'm not sure, it's a bit blurry.

I do understand that it's meant to be a light experience without too many mechanics or layers on top of it, so after all it was fine even if not too clear and just left to your guesses, but it made my choices feel less important or like I had not that much control, making me less invested.

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Visually and sound wise honestly there isn't much to say, it's very basic, not in a sense of good minimalism, even though it's not bad either, but that just isn't anything special, it works tho.

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That said, it was chill enough to make me keep playing, especially because it really required not much attention and I could relax. If someone wants to get a game for mobile to play here and there that does not last forever, I would suggest this game for sure being this simple and quick to start playing.
I just think it could have been better, while this feels more something that came out of a game jam (actually it might be) and didn't get developed much further from that.

The first impression is good but it very quickly becomes repetitive and boring.

Its a mobile game to play while waiting for the bus and should be payed accordingly: 1 buck.

The four resources, church, people, army, money, have to be kept in balance regardless if you want to help a specific party and so it becomes just a mindless juggling of the four bars.

REIGNS is a fun title for 1 hour of gameplay. It's interesting after 2 hours. But once you start hitting that 3-4 hour mark, the systems of choice and consequence becomes familiar and repetitive. For it's low price, this is something to indulge in for a few hours - but the most fun you'll have is trying to get the most unseemly deaths, which can run at odds with the underlying intergenerational plot.