Royals

Royals is a rolguelike kind of game that looks misleadingly basic and is surprisingly difficult. You play the role of a young farmer who gets tired of the simple simpleton life and heads out to create a new purpose for himself, that of becoming a king, queen or a just a royal.

Achieving your new life goal will not be easy at all. Royals is one of the toughest little rouguelikes you’ll find. Not because of the gameplay but because of how well it’s built and thought out.

You start off on a little patch of farmland and from there, you need to explore and carefully way in your options. You can move to any of the map tiles you discover and each of them has one or more tasks you can perform. For example you can rest at the local in, chop down a forest, get a job at a manor, or even romance your way to the top.

Variety is there and surprise outcomes are something to actually fear and for a good reason. Your journey starts at the age of 12 and each action you perform, or each turn ended, costs you one life point out of the initial 20. There’s a good chance you’ll work yourself to death if you’re not careful or you can simply get on someone’s nerves and get killed by soldiers. There is a lot of stuff that goes on and will go down so keeping things in perspective is important.

Trying to do things all on your own is the biggest mistake you can make in Royals, if you do so, you’ll be dead by the time you’re 30. One thing you can benefit from in this game is having followers who will do the work for you. This way, you’ll minimize risk and maximize whatever profitable opportunities present themselves.

However, like we’ve mentioned, Royals is a tough little cookie and getting some fellow bottom feeders to join your selfish cause will be in itself a challenge.Royals won’t cut you any slack. More so, even after you get a handle on how things work, the game still doesn't become any easier thanks to that wonderful thing called a procedurally generated world.

Royals doesn’t look like your typical game and it’s not. You don’t even get a help manual with it and we’ve already told you that it’s a tough one. All the more reasons to dust off the ambitious side of yourself and see how long it will take for you to make something of yourself.