A Song for the Sunrise Demo

Most people like to complain about leaders and governments, but being in charge of millions of people is very difficult nowadays. It was a challenge even back in the day when most kingdoms or states had a few hundred thousands people, and you have to remember what it meant to have a ruler back then. There was little room for complaining, and most leadership changes usually involved death and assassinations.

A Song for the Sunrise is an experimental simulation game that puts you in the role of someone in charge of an entire kingdom. However, there’s very little direct control on your behalf, given the fact that the events are mostly random and you only have two options when it comes to handling them. Granted, the game is in a very early development stage at the moment, so try not to judge it too harshly.   The kingdom is fairly small in the beginning, and there are multiple factions you have to keep happy in order to help the settlement grow. Every event influences one faction, such as religion, military, or the population as a whole. Not listening to the military’s demands can leave you vulnerable if enemies attack, but it would appear that this part of the game is not yet balanced.

The most annoying thing about the game is that you have to keep an eye on a variety of things, including finances, population happiness and all the factions, but there’s no HUD to help you along. Even if the game provides you with a short report every now and again, it feels like everything is a bit too arbitrary to be worth the trouble. Things are bound to be improved in the future, however, especially if the developers keep working on it.   As mentioned before, every situation has only two possible outcomes, which kind of limits your creativity. You can either make one faction happy or unhappy, and future events depend on the happiness of that particular faction. The graphics are nothing too fancy, but the pixel artwork is actually enjoyable, not to mention the nice day/night cycle and the soothing music.

Even if A Song for the Sunrise is very rough at the moment, there’s clearly potential here, especially if more variety is added to the mix. It’s important to have some kind of interface, plus a few more options at your disposal.