HomeNewsThe King Is Watching
The King Is Watching’s free demo turns city building into a brilliant balancing act of feudal surveillanceIf you’ve got time to lean goblins, you’ve got time to clean goblins
If you’ve got time to lean goblins, you’ve got time to clean goblins
Image credit:Hypnohead
Image credit:Hypnohead
The King Is Watching – Official Announcement Trailer | tinyBuild Connect 2024Watch on YouTube
The King Is Watching – Official Announcement Trailer | tinyBuild Connect 2024
Like many of these compact concept-drivenstrategygames do (Slipways, my beloved), The King Is Watching started asan Itch project. “Once you build something, it only works if it is inside your gaze,” is its unique thingamajig. Your ‘gaze’ starts as three squares on a 4x4 tileset, although you can upgrade it for wider gazitude. If a building falls outside your gaze, it doesn’t do anything. I love this concept so much, casting you as a jobsworth supervisor king constantly leering about his kingdom to scare the serfs into quitting munching on their straw sandwiches and get back to work. The gaze limitation makes you consider which sets of buildings you’re going to want active and complimenting each other at any one time.
So, training soldiers takes wheat, so it makes sense to have a defense-ready quadrant with a field and a barracks. Stick a wall-repairing structure in there too, while you’re at it, alongside a mine for the clay you’ll need. Ah, but you’ll also want hardier troops for later waves. But! the training building costs gold, so you’ll want a marketplace to sell wheat…and you can already see how the gaze restriction turns a standard need-and-fulfillment pipeline into a more far more involved and puzzly affair. God save the king’s neck as it relentlessly spins o’er hile and vale in perpetual motion.
Anyway, you throw in a few optional spendables like increased production for ten seconds, plus a roguelike framing that lets you buy upgrades at the end of each run, and I’m hooked. Well, this hook’s big enough for the both of us, reader. Come hang. Worry about the whole impalment thing later. You can grab the free demo on Steamhere. As you can see from the above trailer, the full game looks way more elaborate. Also, the new king’s got a Nigel Thornberry thing going on, so there’s that too.
