Reigns (Indie Game)

Reigns is an interesting small title that misses just a bit to be great for me.

It’s an indie game where you play as a king of a small country. Every turn you will be presented with a card (decision to make) and you can swipe to left or right depending on desired outcome.
There are also four metrics (political factions) you need to watch out for. If they get too low you die, if they are too high… you also die.

Depending on your choices, you get to live or die, once you die another king takes over and you continue the game. The world and stories are somewhat persistent, so the following king will have to deal with some choices – buffs and debuffs – you made in the previous game run.

Reigns has a fun set of characters and dialogs that make it quite a bit enjoyable. The dialogs are quirky, but just about right to work well with the mood the art style sets.

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One mechanic I found frustrating is how unpredictable is impact of my decisions. I understand the game isn’t quite a min/max style of a gameplay, but I would like to see at least some indication of what impact my decision will have on different factions.

I am assuming this game mechanic is done intentionally, but it ended up frustrating me more than making it easier to focus on other aspects of the game.

This brings me to the second and main point why I find the game “not great”.

I have no idea how to win it. Not in a sense of “how do I achieve the goal?” More like what the hell is the goal???

I have no clue, not even a bit. I guess surviving for more years is better? There is no way for me to know, there is no scoreboard or any other indication that tells me I have a reason to keep going.

It matters, because after about an hour of gameplay you will start seeing a lot of decisions repeating and the game will lose a lot of its charm.

Having something to aim at… something that will hint there is more I can discover would make me want to continue playing.

It would make me more interested in trying to understand how to survive for longer and what impact my decisions have.

It could be something trivial, like win the game when you are 100, or grow your country. Anything that will want me to learn more.

Sadly, I haven’t found anything like that in Reigns.

All in all, it was still enjoyable two play sessions. It’s a small, cheap game and it does very well if you don’t have too many expectations.

I would still recommend picking it up on sale, I don’t regret playing.

It was fun, pretty good for one-off evening game with a partner or friends.

It’s a fun group game.