Analysis of the Monarchy – The independent management of a city

The Monarchy invites you to build a kingdom from scratch as we explore its forests and defend ourselves against bandits

Being king is not an easy task…or at least it wasn’t in the Middle Ages. We need to find a great place to lay the foundation of our city, hire people to work for us, and spend coins to build new facilities. If we add to this the need to protect our stronghold from bandit attacks, things get complicated. Fortunately, in the monarchy we will learn all these procedures and many more in case one day we want to become a monarch.

Live the day, survive the night

Brain Seal is the studio responsible for bringing us this particular management game. We will be the future king of completely empty lands. We will have to expand our domains by reinforcing our territory with walls, watchtowers and archers who stop the advance of the rival siege. A feat that starts off easy but then gets more complicated as we get better infrastructure and new types of soldiers. And despite the simplicity that the monarchy apparently denotes, it hides behind a great strategic work. For those who ask (and even if the comparisons are odious), This proposal is very reminiscent of Kingdom, although with playable and visual variations.

Coins and villagers will be the resources that matter most throughout the adventure. We will be able to recruit labor every day to help us with the tasks we need and assign them employment according to our needs. From loggers responsible for felling trees, to builders or of course, warriors who risk their lives for the kingdom by defending it every night. Because like a good king, we do not attack, but we defend ourselves. We will experience all this in a series of four stages already predefined by the game itself and which serve as a sort of tutorial.

Our life has a price

The controls are very simple. We simply We will move from left to right on the back of our horse, giving orders and choosing areas to explore or set up camp. The fun lies in finding unexpected things that make us change the initial strategy. We may be invaded by bandits, or we may suddenly run out of resources and have to go to the forest. There are even caves and caves that hide secrets…sometimes good and sometimes bad.

Once we have chosen the area where to create a building, we will simply pay the coins necessary to raise the first blocks and that’s it. Be careful with coins, as they are a very important factor in the monarchy. In addition to being a way to pay for things, it will also be our own life bar. If we run out of coins and are hit by a rival, we will automatically be dead. The same thing happens if they invade our camp and destroy the main building. It will be time to start something new with all that that entails, and that hurts a lot.

Jack, horse and KING

Although as a management graduate it is surprising how much you can do with so little, the truth is that There comes a point where everything can get a little repetitive. This will be because there is no practical story behind it, or that in the end every mapping is done the same way (especially at the beginning). There are also no clear goals that invite us to explore everything around us. And that for a certain type of user, including myself, hampers the experience a bit.

Visually, we are dealing with a very beautiful title. Despite the simplicity that we can see in the first moments, with character animations of questionable quality, Everything moves fluidly and there is some variety of biomes. The exteriors (with their days and nights) and interiors of the caves have their own touch that makes them different. A minimalist touch appreciated when there is a lot of movement on the screen, with soldiers on one side and the other breaking their backs with blows or arrows. This factor also helps us not to lose our protagonist if we play in his local cooperative mode, with which the Monarchy gains several integers.

Conclusion on the monarchy

Brain Seal invites us to manage a kingdom from scratch in a fluid, minimalist and understandable way for all types of users. We will play a king who, mounted on the back of his horse, must entrust his subjects with a series of tasks for the proper functioning of the kingdom. From felling trees, constructing buildings or defenses and of course, recruiting a good group of soldiers to protect us from bandits.

Despite the simplicity of its controls, there are things that don’t convince me. Firstly, the lack of a story mode or anything similar. We will have four phases that will serve as a tutorial, but we are never told any specific facts or objectives. We will play for the simple pleasure of building a better castle and achieving the objectives set by each map. And while there are elements of surprise that will occur when you least expect them, it can be repetitive in the early stages of creating our kingdom. Nobody said that creating our empire was easy, although if we want to give part of the government to a friend, we can take advantage of its cooperative mode to enjoy much more of the virtues that the monarchy harbors.