Tales of a Spymaster

Being a spy requires a lot of dedication and good instincts, because although there are some things that always go the same way, most of the job is actually about improvisation and being good at reading situations on the spot. In fact, spies have played crucial roles in history since ancient times, given the fact that countless kings and rulers have fallen because of their cunning tricks.

Tales of a Spymaster is a turn-based strategy game that features a different kind of approach to the genre, one that does not provide you with the role of the leader for a change. As such, you are actually the spymaster in charge of obtaining information about everyone else, and your job is to advise the king/emperor on what decisions to make and how to approach each situation.

The trick is that you do not have direct control over the cities and the buildings, but you can hire agents and various other units to accomplish your goals. Mercenaries and plague bearers can come in handy as well, but it all resumes to whether the king listens to your or not. Hence, given the fact that your information can come from other spies as well, and it’s not always right, it can happen that the leadership ignores your advice entirely.

As mentioned before, everything takes place in turns, which means that you can only make a handful of moves at a time, and you do not see their effects immediately. This should force you to pay more attention to your tactics, especially since you already have restrained control over what’s happening on the map. In fact, the lack of actual control might turn a few players off, at least if they cannot cope with the idea.

Since the game is in such an early stage of the development process, it’s only natural that it looks pretty rough from a visual point of view. The graphics are as basic as they can get, and the world map lacks any kind of interesting features to make you want to conquer it. There’s enough time for that to be fixed, on the other hand, especially if the developers spend more time refining the actual gameplay.

All things being equal, Tales of a Spymaster is not exactly top-notch at the moment, probably because the gameplay mechanics are not very well refined. However, the underlying concept is very intriguing, and it would be nice to see it brought to life in better shape sometime in the future.