Medieval Tinder.

It's a fun, casual management game for a while, but there's a frustrating mechanic which ruined the game, stopping me from wanting to play any further.

Certain cards will trigger events which cause a resource to either continually accumulate or deminish. This essentially puts the entire game on a timer (a relatively short timer at that), and instead of taking my time, weighing my choices and enjoying the writing (which, albiet, does become repetitive before too long), I found myself in a mad hurry, trying to spend/ gain a specific resource before my king dies.

While a real-time element isn't necessarily damning for any game, it absolutely clashes against the minimalist, casual presentation on offer here, hence why I wouldn't recommend Reigns.

Along with Downwell, a must buy for the price.

The situation was grim...

My coffers were empty, my citizens on the verge of starvation and revolt...

In a last ditch effort to pull my kingdom back from the edge of collapse I decided to allow the slave trade to operate in my kingdom. The money started to flow and my coffers were soon full, but my people were outraged at my decision. I later went on to have an affair with one of the kindom's most prominent female celebrities, causing my citizens to become devoted to me, no matter what i did.

The church did not agree with my affair...

Soon later a group religeous fanatics stormed my palace, took me captive, and burned me at the stake for my sins.

10/10 - best compelling story for $3 ever!

I'm not really sure what to say about this game. It's fun, yet after a while it becomes a chore.
However, it is really, really fun. I played this with some friends and we were all yelling at each other over certain choices, so that could have lengenthened the longevity of this game.

You basically choose left or right, usually two choices that are yes/no or two choices that seem similar and don't really have a different outcome. I don't know. After about 2 hours you might notice every choice leads to certain things happening because you have gotten them so much, and you might try to "spice" it up by picking the opposite of said choice, but it will lead to immediate failure or just nothing positive happening and making you stay with your original choice from now on.

However, at other times, you might pick the same choice you picked the previous times and something different will happen, which is definitely good even though it doesn't sound like it from just reading it. Then you might try to pick that choice again hoping for that uncommon outcome, not get it, and just feel awful because you lost or something stupid bad happened. I guess that's part of the game though.

There will also be times in the game where you just have no chance at all. A plague will come and you have to make some of your resources plummet, followed up by another event that will do the same thing, most likely ending up dead. Then in the same manner, there is times where everything goes absolutely perfectly and you get a crazy run with a possibly locked resource (when a resource can't go down.)

There's also not really any description of the stuff and it will take a while to figure out what choices will influence what (or at least how much a choice will affecta resource by how much.)

Honestly, I'm making it sound negative but I do recommend this game. It's cheap, and I've gotten plenty of fun out of it so far (7.5 hours currently.) Just wish there was a bit more information given or a way to skew the luck into your favor more often, which there very well might be and I just haven't found it yet.

This game is repetitive. You will easily get bored.

However, that's not the reason to deny this game.
At least, the first draw of any card is full of surprise. Also, I think this game is much better on the cellphone since you can finish a cycle when you in the toilet, waiting someone/something or any time when there is a short period of boredom. It's a great game to kill small amount of time.

Pros:
fun and surprising cards
medival fantasy story

Cons:
RNG might be annoying
decks are set, you will find it repetitive eventually.

Conclusion: for a 3 bucks game, I'd say it worth the price. I wish there are more decks in the future.

If you like being murdered in interesting ways, then this is the game for you.

I love this game, but I'll admit some may find it frustrating due to failure. I think the failure is the point in a way. It's a brilliant representation of that feeling of knowing you can only balance things for so long before they all fall.

I find myself asking the screen "Are you kidding me?," though in an enjoyable way. Highly recommened if you like games that aren't really about winning.

Novelty game. Gets old fast. Very fast.

Gave my wife control over the Church and Army so she wouldn't spread news of my love affair with my artist Randall. Was abruptly overrun by an angry, godless mob.
10/10 would ♥♥♥♥ Randall again.

Reigns is a very interesting little story-building game. Yeah, I think it was built for mobile, but it works well on the PC with options for controller and keyboard-only support. The price-point is actually pretty great considering the overall polish and quality hours you can get out of it.

Some people compare the mechanic to Tinder, but I wouldn't. Yeah, sure, you swipe left and right to say 'yes' or 'no', but that's about where the comparison ends, IMHO. Essentially, the whole game is a series of mini decisions that affect one-or-more of your four stats. The excercise is in sort-of memorizing the outcome of the various decision choices. The game tells you before hand what stats will be affected (and gives you an idea of the magnitude), but does not tell you if it will be positive or negative.

The cool thing about this, is the story progresses chronologically and often references past runs. You earn more cards in the deck by completing mini objectives. It is all very cool, but once again, the scope never really breaches mobile-status.

Pros:
+Cool idea that works well; it is quite entertaining as the stories build
+Humor is good
+Artwork is nice
+Mechanic works well particularly considering controller support

Cons:
-While there is a good bit to do, I'd imagine that once everything is completed, there will be little reason to keep playing
-Never breaches the scope of a mobile-game, IMO

Totally worth three bucks. You'll definately get sucked in for at least an afternoon, I'd say.