King Of The Castle Review: Hail to the King Baby

A new Monarch sits on the throne looking for an heir and a means to fulfill their ambition, while the Three Noble Houses plot and scheme to get their puppet on the throne. There are four teams in King Of The Castle. One player is the Monarch, who rules the Kingdom, sets laws, collects taxes, executes traitors, and more.

The other players join one of the Three Noble Houses, who get to be on the council and vote for what policies or laws get passed in the Kingdom. And I say four teams because even though the rest of the players are Nobles, it does not mean they are all on the same team.

The best part of King Of The Castle is that only one person needs to buy one copy for all your friends/viewers to play. It works like a Jack-Box-Party game. One player has the game and shares the game code, and everyone else can join using their internet devices and go on the website with the code. If you play in party mode, you can have up to 24 players in a single session. If you play in Twitch mode, you can have over 100 players. Those playing for free can only play as a noble, but if you play with the paid version, you can be King and customize all your characters.

King Of The Castle is currently available on PC for $9.99.

Story – The Monarch Is Dead. Long Live the Monarch!

The old King has passed away and made the Monarch player heir to the throne. Meanwhile, the Nobles of the Great Houses want to replace the Monarch player with one of their claimants to the throne to serve as their puppet. Before a game begins, the Monarch player decides which 3 Great Houses will exist in their Kingdom.

Choose your challengers!

The Coup Crew

The first is the Barons of the March. They are frontier people often living on the far borders of the Kingdom. They are blunt and aggressive. But are also resourceful and great survivalist wearing the finest pelts from their hunts. In terms of stats, they are the most well-rounded. 

No idea what pelt made this hat, but I say it looks rather dapper.

Next is the Chiefs of the North. The best way to explain this is that they are a mix of Vikings and the Starks of Winterfell, including their worship of the Old Gods. King Of The Castle was not particularly subtle in their Game of Thrones reference for them. In terms of military prowess, the Chiefs have no equal.

The Chiefs of the North Remembers.

Then you have the (totally not vampires) Counts of the East. They are the most Halloween faction. They perform dark rituals and experiments like creating Frankenstein monsters to achieve their ends. Shrouded in mystery and secrecy, it’s no wonder the Monarch’s Spymaster is wary of them. Despite the gloominess of the landscape, the Counts of the East have the most fertile farmlands.

Indeed this time you can blame the wizard.

In stark contrast, you have the Grandees of the South. They are honorable and hyper-religious of the Ninth God. Loyal to the Church above all else. They pray to the Ninth God to help defeat their enemies. In return, they do what they believe is his bidding, including taking over the Kingdom for the Church. If it wasn’t obvious, the Grandees have the highest Faith stat.

Call the cleric! The Monarch will need Cure Wounds spell when we are done with them.

Finally, you have the Patricians of the Coast. Arguably the richest of the Great Houses, they flaunt their wealth and use contracts and debt as weapons. What they lack in military might, they more than make up for in wealth and trade. If you like earning lots of gold, the Patricians are for you.

One way or another the Patricians always get their Gold.

Story Overall

Which of the Houses are playing is one of the many factors that alter the story. There are so many variations that nearly no two games will be alike, for the most part. Some early set-up events can be repetitive, but they recently patched some additions to give them variety. But even so, I can imagine those who play this a lot may start skipping those early events to get into the meat of the game.

I remember one playthrough with my friends where we laughed like crazy after a funeral dispute questline ended with the body of a deceased noble shooting lasers from its eyes and killing one of them, requiring their child to replace them on the council, and starting a new issue with the Church declaring the laser blasts holy retribution. It’s hilarious, and unexpected situations like that give this game its charm.

Gameplay – One King to Rule Them All

Once the Monarch player chooses which Houses will compete, the other players join and get assigned to one of the Three Houses. At a minimum, you will need one player in each House. So, four players in total. If you have an uneven amount of players in a House or two, the Monarch player can choose for balance voting so that the House(s) with fewer players will get extra votes to have equal power with the higher player count House(s).

Imagine how the Electoral College in America gives smaller States more voting power to compete with the larger States. Having an unbalanced vote system can be interesting. You would have an underdog House(s) that can throw a wrench into schemes or ambitions. I recommend you ask the other players if they are okay with this.

If you own the game you can choose which House you want to play as, where as playing for free randomly assigns you.

Stats of the State

After that, the game truly begins. As the Monarch Player, you get an introduction to the Kingdom and the playing Houses, seeing where they are on the map. On the left side of the screen, you see the in-game year/season and all the stats.

The first three below are the Monarch’s stats. Authority is how much respect you can command. In some events, you may need to roll a check against your Authority stat to determine if people will listen to your orders or decrees. The next is the Treasury, which is how much Gold your Kingdom has. In some scenarios, you may gain, lose, or have to spend your gold. Finally, there is Stability, which is how peaceful and safe your Kingdom is. If Stability and Authority is too low, you can risk one or more of the Houses going into open rebellion. How that works will be covered further.

The Monarch will lose the game if any of those three stats reaches zero. If the Monarch lost this way, the Noble’s will vote between the Claimants of the two most powerful of the Three Houses. Below the Monarch’s stats are the Three Houses’ stats. Any of these can reach zero without losing. They also determine which events occur in the game.

Important to note, only the Monarch will see this screen so you will need to see their screen via streaming or other methods to see what is going on.

Stats of the Houses

Trade determines the personal wealth the Noble players will receive at the end of the in-game year. The higher the Trade stat, the more wealth they get. Then you have a Farming stat for feeding the peasants and the Military. It would be hard to take over the Kingdom on an empty belly.

The Military stat is what you use to determine how well a House can defend the borders from its neighboring Houses or its likelihood to win in open rebellion if schemes aren’t working for you. Faith is a House’s zeal in the Ninth God. It affects their relationship with the Church as well as causes unique events to occur.

Finally, you have Defiance, which is how angry the House’s region is at the Monarch. If a House’s Defiance stat becomes higher than the Monarch’s Authority and Stability stat, the House can vote to declare open rebellion. If they vote to rebel, their scheme pauses and the House wins by getting victory points. These are earned by completing objectives and having a high Military stat. If two of the Houses rebel and win, a vote between the two rebelling Houses decides who wins the game. If all three Houses rebel, the Monarch automatically loses, and the winner is chosen randomly between the Three Noble Houses.

So it’s treason then…

How to Win as Monarch

For the Monarch player to win, they need an heir to the throne and complete their ambition task. What that ambition task would be is up to the player. Want to be known as a conqueror? Raise the military before time runs out. A Peacemaker? Keep your Stability high for X amount of turns. Bringer of a Golden Age? Raise everyone’s wealth. There are many more to choose from, and you can change it halfway through if it looks like your previous ambition is impossible in that political climate.

These are some of the paths to victory for the Monarch.

How to Win as a Noble

For the Nobles to win, they either need to lower one of the Monarch’s stats to 0, win an open rebellion, or fulfill their Scheme. Near the beginning of the game, each House will have an internal vote for what Scheme they will perform to remove the Monarch from the throne. After they choose, they will have three parts. Each part requires a task completed before the end of a certain number of turns. Completing one part will give you a new one. Complete all three parts before the other Houses, and your team wins. Schemes may be the most challenging method, but it is the most guaranteed method to win. The others can either be left up to chance or vote.

In one of my games, one of the Schemes was when the Patricians tried to drown my Kingdom in debt. Their first part was to lower my treasury to 1500 by three seasons, thus forcing me to take a loan from them. For the second part, they needed the highest trade-in four seasons. Making sure the other Houses had to take loans from them. Then, for the coup de grace, they had to raise my Stability to 10 in four seasons, allowing the Patricians to sell the loans to another country that aided them in a takeover to get their gold back. And that is how I lost that game of King Of The Castle.

The Crown/diamonds are the stats the Monarch and House want to effect. Down arrows mean they want it lower, up arrows mean higher, and a checkmark is just right.

Typical Turn

So, when you start a turn, you will see flags sprawled around the map with little names on them. These are events that get triggered by either stats or previous events. The Monarch player would click on it, and a cutscene would play, giving a premise or continuing a plot of a prior event. Most of the time, the cutscene would then lead to a vote.

As for my game, Count Alucard of the East made a Frankenstein monster that got loose, and the Noble council had to vote on how we handled it. As King, I have some power to affect the votes and used one of my laws to veto an option I definitely didn’t want. I can only do that once per season, so I had to be careful when to use that law or the few others I have.

After voting concludes, we see the outcome in the story and the stats that rise or fall because of it. Next, you do the same for the next flag until all the flags are gone. After that, you move on to the next season and repeat until one of the win conditions is achieved.

If you look at option D you see that it has a percentage which means it will roll to determine an outcome.

Taxes

After a few seasons, the Monarch can collect taxes on any of the Three Houses as long as the House isn’t in open rebellion, and this is the primary way the Monarch can raise their Treasury stat. The Monarch has three choices per House.

Either a Cruel Tax that will significantly increase the Monarch’s Treasury but lowers the Noble’s personal wealth quite a bit and increases their Defiance stat. Then you have a Common Tax, which gives the Monarch less money but doesn’t anger anyone. Then, the Monarch can Bribe a House. However, it will decrease the Monarch’s Treasury by giving the Nobles more personal wealth but decreasing their defiance stat. Doing this might be a cunning way to get players to vote in ways the Monarch wants.

If only taxes in real life were so simple.

Auctions

The Nobles will now and then be able to use their personal wealth in Auctions. These Auctions allow the Nobles to raise or lower stats by bidding for infrastructure like prisons or libraries. Only two infrastructures per Auction, so the Three Noble Houses must compete and spend for which one they want.

Rather strange to be spending money on a Thieves Guild.

Overall, I enjoy the gameplay. It is fun and easy to learn, though it can be deceptively long. So be sure you are willing to commit time to King Of The Castle. Having played both the Monarch a few times and as a Noble once, I would say I enjoyed both equally. I wish the game would let the free-to-play Noble players choose their House, but I understand they need to encourage more people to buy the game. I also wish there was more inter-House politics, like perhaps a spy player to throw a wrench into things. Or a noble player getting rewarded for betraying one of their fellow House members or somehow getting to be King by betraying their House.

Graphics/Audio – Good for What It Needs to Be

The graphics are simple but stylistic. Since this game is like a visual novel, you won’t see many animations. It is fun seeing your player characters interact with each other during silly Game of Thrones-like drama. The user interface is also simple and easy to understand and memorize what each symbol means.

The music is very traditional medieval music songs. It is calm and thematic, making for tranquil work music as I write this article. When King Of The Castle first came out, the music was a bit repetitive, but Tributary Games recently added more songs in their latest update, which fixed that issue. 

King Of The Castle was reviewed on PC.